


Un Jeu de Cache-Cache

by nikkiscarlet



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anxious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Anxious Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale Has a Vulva (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley in Love (Good Omens), Aziraphale in Lingerie (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a Little Shit (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a coquette, Bottom Aziraphale (Good Omens), Bratty Aziraphale, Comedy, Consensual Kink, Crowley Has a Penis (Good Omens), Dirty Talk, Dom Crowley (Good Omens), Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Exhibitionism, Facials, Food Play, Humiliation kink, Light BDSM, Loving Sex, M/M, No Betas We Fall Like Crowley, Orgasm Denial, Other, Porn with Feelings, Possessive Crowley, Praise Kink, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Romance, Rough Sex, Sexting, Spanking, Sub Aziraphale (Good Omens), Top Crowley (Good Omens), Wet & Messy, consensual tracking device, messy sex, sexy selfies, vulva spanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22060270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiscarlet/pseuds/nikkiscarlet
Summary: [Gift fic] What's an angel to do when he's gifted a mobile phone he doesn't want, and is told it's for his safety?. . . Apparently, he's going to use it to take erotic selfies.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 48
Kudos: 263





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A gift fic for Aivelin. I was your Top Crowley Discord Secret Santa! The prompt I was filling was: 
> 
> "Azi got smartphone to make such selfies for Crowley after Armageddon't"
> 
> Photos given by Aivelin as examples for the prompt included: https://bit.ly/2ML4Pwx and https://bit.ly/2SJR6ts
> 
> I had a lot of fun filling this, and I hope you enjoy it!

It had been a pleasantly routine sort of afternoon for Aziraphale, up until Crowley walked into the shop with a smallish, sleekly-wrapped box in his hand.

He’d just laid the needle down on a nice bit of Schubert when he heard the door to the shop swing open, and the familiar chime in the ether that informed him his visitor was of the supernatural variety. A quick check over his shoulder had his face relaxing back into a smile.

“Well, this is a nice surprise,” he greeted, emerging from his office to meet his favourite person by the entryway. “I wasn’t expecting you for another few hours.”

“Didn’t have much keeping me away, really.” Crowley gave him a bit of a lopsided grin, and was carrying himself in that way he usually did when he was trying his very best to be especially charming. A lean to one hip, a squaring of the shoulders, and a deepening of his voice into a drawling purr. It was, as usual, working — Aziraphale could feel the familiar flutter in his chest, even as his mind immediately started in on trying to work out what he was up to. With very little ceremony, Crowley placed a gentle hand on Aziraphale’s cheek and a brief, yet tender kiss to his lips. The movement was fluid and natural; almost automatic. They were both growing rather accustomed to this new level of physical comfort and intimacy with one another, ever since the Big Nevermind.

Before Aziraphale could ask about it, Crowley held the little box up under their chins. He said nothing about it, but made it clear that the box was for him.

Taking it, Aziraphale decided to inquire anyway. “My goodness, what’s the occasion?”

Crowley shrugged. “Whatever you like. What’s it been — two thousand, three hundred and seventy- . . . _four_ days now without a discorporation? That’ll do, if nothing else.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes slightly with a tight-lipped smile. He’d grant — he wasn’t certain whether Crowley was teasing him or not, as Crowley’s tone always seemed to take just a slight, vaguely melancholic dip any time he brought it up. Nevertheless, he did bring it up rather more than was necessary, and it tended to _feel_ a bit like ribbing. 

Not that Crowley really had much place to poke fun — where their discorporation tallies were concerned, Aziraphale was sitting at exactly one, and Crowley was still leading by a handful. One of those, admittedly, having happened more or less at Aziraphale’s hands, in fairness. And another also being, at the very least, Aziraphale’s fault. These were quite a long time ago, of course — back when they were still working out the etiquette and professional courtesy required of field agents who were working in opposition to one other but still sort of enjoyed a chat between assignments. When one discorporated one’s professional rival, was one meant to buy said rival a drink upon their next meeting? Generally, they’d ended up deciding, this was acceptable for restoring the ‘no hard feelings’ status quo. And Aziraphale had only ended up needing to do this once, anyway. The second time, after the entirely unintended discorporation, he’d upgraded quite on his own to arriving at said rival’s door with both a full bottle of wine and a very nice bracelet he’d found at the market, as well as some rather amusing celestial gossip that had quickly tipped the scales back to a comfortable, and even friendly place.

Returning to the present, however, Aziraphale concluded that this was a gift given for the sake of giving it, and acknowledged it as such. He unwrapped it carefully, as he always did with wrapped presents, and discovered a box as black and mysterious as the wrapping paper had been. Opening that revealed a shiny, black slab, rimmed with gold and laid out on white velvet.

He blinked, and looked inquisitively up at Crowley.

“It’s a phone,” Crowley explained.

“Yes, I’m aware of what it is, I’ve seen you use yours.” He eyed the device with obvious distrust. “Why am _I_ looking at one in a box?”

“Because it’s for you.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Ah,” he said after a moment that stretched just long enough to become awkward. Then another, even more awkward silence followed, before he tried a very polite smile, a closing of the box, and a push of the whole package back in Crowley’s direction. “No, thank you,” he concluded, with warmth.

Crowley shook his head. “Not taking it back,” he informed him.

Aziraphale wasn’t certain how to respond to that. Crowley was usually very good at gifts. Extremely good. Intensely thoughtful. Receiving a gift from Crowley that _didn’t_ interest him simply didn’t happen. Except, perhaps, that time when Crowley had offered him a cake of soap for lunch because he’d thought it was some sort of local delicacy. That, too, had been in the very early days. And even that had at least made for a good conversation starter. 

Not only that, but he’d always very clearly been ready to take back any gift if he perceived even the slightest bit of dissatisfaction with it — to the point where Aziraphale had had to insist very strongly his desire to keep some of his gifts in the past. 

“But I don’t want it,” said Aziraphale.

“But I want you to have it,” countered Crowley.

“Might I ask why?”

“It’s useful.”

“I’m sure it is, but I have plenty of useful things that serve me just as well.”

Crowley sighed. “It’s useful to _me_ if you have it.”

Aziraphale’s brow creased ever further. “I don’t follow.”

Another heavy exhale from Crowley, although this time he seemed more internally frustrated than anything. He had that look about him like he was trying to figure out how to explain something.

“It’s . . . it’s a way of . . . . ” He growled just slightly, again at himself. “Look, I usually have a pretty good nose for when you’re in trouble, right? But the one time — the _one_ time I didn’t get it right, you lost a body and got stuck up in Heaven. And _I_ thought—” He crammed his knuckles against his own lips for a moment and walked in a tight circle, inhaling sharply before continuing. “I thought something else _entirely_ had happened.”

Aziraphale nodded, gentle and solemn. “I know,” he said, even if he still wasn’t quite sure he understood how a portable telephone would have helped matters. His discorporation had been a rather sudden accident of a thing — there hadn’t been time to make any more phone calls.

“And, I know, pulling out a phone isn’t necessarily going to be the first thing you think to do in an emergency,” Crowley carried on, as if he’d heard Aziraphale’s thoughts. “But it’s not even about the calling. It’s . . . it’s about knowing where you are and how to get to you.”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his own mobile, holding it up and turning on its screen with a press of a button. “They’re more than just phones now, Aziraphale. They’re . . . one of these is about a hundred times more powerful than the . . . the _tax-filing machine_ you’ve got in the back. They’re tiny computers.”

Aziraphale nodded again, still not quite certain how this was all tied together.

Crowley, meanwhile, looked like he was in the depths of an identity crisis. “And . . . and you can put these . . . these programs on them that you can use to sort of . . . keep track of people. Where they are. The phones already do this by default! But they have things that let you use the technology that’s already in them to . . . t-to look after people that you want to . . . look after.”

Nodding very slowly, Aziraphale concluded, “So, if I’m interpreting this correctly, what you’re saying is that you want to put some sort of . . . tracking device on me?”

“When you put it like that, it sounds _bloody_ awful!” sputtered Crowley, almost too readily, as if he’d been expecting that question. “This isn’t— I’m not trying to be _invasive_ , all right? You’ll still have your privacy, you’ll still have every right to shut me out entirely if and when you need to. I just want— in _unusual circumstances_ , or any time there might be a . . . a potential _situation_ , possibly concerning . . . ” he paused to point meaningfully up, and then down. “I just want to be able to say, ‘Right, according to this, he’s in Beijing,’ and be able to get to you as fast as possible. And it’d be _entirely_ voluntary on your part! If you don’t want me knowing where you are, just turn off the phone. Or leave it somewhere, for all I care. It’s not fool-proof, it’s not all-powerful, it’s not flawless. It’s just one tool in the arsenal, all right? It’s a _precaution_. It’s not a way to control your every movement.” 

Crowley looked absolutely miserable. Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure why. He shook his head and shrugged. “I didn’t think it was. I’m in favour of the idea.”

“I _knew_ you were going to say that, and—wait, what?” Crowley’s face, initially pinched and sour, relaxed into something softer, albeit with his eyebrows shooting toward his hairline.

Entirely nonchalant, even interested, Aziraphale confirmed his previous statement. “Yes, I think it’s a good idea, at least in theory. Would I be able to keep track of you, as well?”

“Oh . . . Oh, yeah. Yeah! You could!” Crowley pushed the gift phone back toward Aziraphale’s chest, grinning. “But you’ll have to learn how to use thissss,” he teased.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Yes, I rather expected as much. I don’t suppose there’s a more . . . celestial option, is there?”

“Not really. Not one we haven’t already been using. Or one that isn’t managed by the exact people we’re trying to avoid.” Crowley shrugged, holding up his phone. “I mean, technically they all have access to these networks, too. I just don’t think they’d think to use them.”

“Very well, then.” Clearing his throat, Aziraphale removed the mobile from its packaging and examined it. The entire backing of it was a soft gold colour, and he noted the shape of a bitten apple imprinted there. Coming from the Serpent of Eden, he supposed it was meant to be a reference to how they'd met, which he couldn’t help finding sweet.

He held it up to his ear. “All right. How do I dial?” he asked. “Do I ask the operator to track your phone number? I can’t hear a tone.”

Crowley’s knees looked a little unsteady for a moment, but he was smiling. Wordlessly, he reached up and cupped Aziraphale’s hand with his own, gently guiding it and the phone back down from Aziraphale’s ear. Circling around behind him, he slid his hands down both of Aziraphale’s arms until he was guiding both of his hands, and positioned them both on either side of the phone. Putting pressure on one of Aziraphale’s fingers activated a small button along the side of the device, and its screen lit up.

“ . . . Oh,” said Aziraphale, softly. “Well, this is nice.” He wasn’t talking about the phone.

“Mm,” agreed Crowley, his nose and lips brushing against the back of Aziraphale’s left ear. “And you know, I’ve got nowhere else to be for the rest of the day. We can head over to the sofa and I can start teaching you the basics of how to work one of these.”

Aziraphale couldn’t help pouting a little. “I don’t know,” he said. “If I’m honest, it sounds a bit of a drab use of my time with you, poking at some piece of machinery.”

There was a chuckle from Crowley, but apparently he wasn’t about to let Aziraphale wiggle out of this so easily. “Aziraphale, I know you like to go at your own pace, but I really think you’ve been missing out on this one,” he said, steering the both of them in the direction of Aziraphale’s office. “The humans’ve put _everything_ on these things. You love human ingenuity! You love magic tricks! These devices are a perfect blend of both.”

He had Aziraphale’s reluctant attention. “What do you mean, ‘magic tricks’? Can the phone pull a rabbit out of a hat?”

“Well . . . Sort of. Probably. No, look,” Crowley sat Aziraphale down on the sofa, then settled in next to him and held the screen up so both of them could see, flicking his fingers around the screen to show off the user interface. “Look. Look what they’ve done. You see? They’ve made it so they can make anything they like happen with just a gesture. Need to do a calculation that’s just a little too complex to be convenient? Poke that there, you’ve got a calculator — that’s a modern abacus.”

“I know what a calculator is,” grumbled Aziraphale.

“And when you’re done with it? Flick! Look at that, it’s gone.”

“. . . Yes, that’s very cute—”

“‘Cute’?! Aziraphale, it’s basically what _I_ used to do with atoms and cosmic gases back in the old days! Tap, there’s a star. Flick, there’s a couple of planets banging into each other. Now the humans are all, ‘Tap, there’s my dinner scheduled.’ ‘Flick, just ordered my kid’s birthday present.’” He grinned broadly, shaking his head. “Lovely, clever humans. Without even realizing they find so many ways to do things like we do.”

If any further protest had formed in Aziraphale’s mind, it died on his tongue as his heart grew warm, watching Crowley’s face brighten as he sang the praises of human beings. Sometimes it truly stunned him how much love he felt for the demon at his side.

“That is very nice, isn’t it?” Was all he could muster, smiling softly.

“I can show you more!” Crowley enthused. “Look, look up at the screen. There’s us, yeah?”

“It becomes a mirror?”

“It becomes a _camera!_ Look! Just snapped a selfie. Well, an . . . ‘Ussie’, I suppose? Is it still a selfie if it’s more than one person?” He paused a moment to think about that. Aziraphale couldn’t say he had much stake in the results, so he just waited for Crowley’s train of thought to re-right itself. “Anyway, so now you’ve got a picture of us. You can take a picture of anything, just by pressing this button here. There’s even a flash if you need the extra light. Just like a real camera.”

“Except without all the flash powder going off in your face,” Aziraphale observed with a nod, admittedly impressed. 

“ . . . Yeah,” said Crowley, pausing to plant a little peck on his temple. Then he took Aziraphale’s hand and guided it back over the screen. “Listen, let me show you more. There’s so much these things can do!”

With an exaggerated, long-suffering sigh, Aziraphale nodded his assent. “If it means that much to you, my dear.”

There was a silence in response that was long enough to make Aziraphale worry he might have offended him, but when he looked over, Crowley was still smiling.

“Not ‘it’, angel,” said Crowley, just before he leaned over and stole another kiss.


	2. Chapter 2

As the weeks passed, Aziraphale’s new phone saw very little active use. It stayed mostly in his breast pocket (“right next to my heart,” he’d promised Crowley), and once he’d gotten used to the slight weight it added to his cardigan, he tended to forget it was there. His first instinct whenever he needed to call someone was still to pick up the receiver on one of his landline phones, and any time he needed the internet for any reason (which was still a fair rarity), he just used his computer. The only time he ever picked up and used the mobile in those first weeks was when he heard or felt it ring in his pocket. And even that took some adjustment — the first time it was ever called, he hadn’t known what was happening and ended up flinging his entire cardigan across the room in a panic. When Crowley called back on the shop’s line, he’d had to calm him down and explain ringtones and the vibrate function.

By summertime, Crowley had taken to calling the mobile exclusively. And soon enough after that, Aziraphale noticed that Crowley never seemed to pick up if he called him from the shop’s line. He’d let it go to his voice mail or ansaphone, then always immediately call back to Aziraphale’s mobile.

“That’s cruel,” Aziraphale pouted when Crowley confirmed it as intentional. “What if it’s an emergency?”

“. . . I mean, in fairness, mobiles _are_ a lot more convenient in an emergency than a phone that’s stuck in a fixed location,” Crowley pointed out.

“But what if I’ve lost the mobile?”

“Then me calling you back would help you find it, I suspect.”

Aziraphale huffed. “It’s still disregarding my personal preferences,” he sulked.

“Yes, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Crowley conceded. “I didn’t mean it like that — I just thought it’d be good to give you some practice using it, that’s all. Have you even tried out that tracking app we installed since that first day? It’s the whole reason you went for it in the first place.”

“ . . . Not really, no,” Aziraphale admitted. “Mostly forgot about it, if I’m honest.”

“Why don’t you give it a try? See where I am right now.”

“You’re not in Mayfair?”

“I am not!” Crowley was sounding very pleased with himself, which Aziraphale interpreted as potentially being either a delightful thing or a dreadful thing. “Go ahead and hang up, then pull up the app and have a look. You can call me back on any telephone you like.”

“All right, I’ll call you back, then. Goodbye!” It took a try or two to properly hang up, but once he had, he did as Crowley had asked. The program was easy enough to use, since Crowley had helped him get it fully set up on the first day, so it brought up his location almost immediately upon opening. 

Aziraphale squinted at the screen for a moment, then reached for the rotary phone at his side. 

“Crowley,” he said, figuring that the fact that they were picking up an interrupted conversation meant he could dispense with the salutation, “why are you at Parliament?”

There was a chuckle on Crowley’s end. “I’m distributing some pamphlets, in a manner of speaking.”

“For what?” 

“A little something I’m cooking up,” said Crowley. “It’s a bit premature for me to be advertising, really, but it’s always good to plant the seeds of curiosity nice and early. I’ll be heading to the Square Mile after this.”

“Advertising? Seeds? What are you on about?”

“Well, it’s like you were saying a few weeks ago. I’ve been a little aimless lately — been in need of a project to keep me occupied.”

“And you’ve found one?”

Crowley didn’t reply, but Aziraphale could _hear_ him grinning.

“I see. And is this the kind of project that you’d have pitched to your former employers?”

After a pause, Crowley said, “I probably would have had to talk it up a bit, but I might have, yes.”

“Oh, _Crowley_.”

“Don’t give me that tone, angel. I know you’ve been doing double time on the blessings ever since we walked out . . . or, well, ever since that pandemic finally ended, anyway. People having miraculous little turns of fortune all over the place, just because you can now. I’m just indulging, same as you.”

“But _really_ . . . . ”

“It’s only a bit of mischief. Keeps things interesting for them. I can keep it interesting for you, too. Give you a little guessing game. Give me a second.” Aziraphale could hear some fumbling around in the background, but it took a little time before Crowley’s voice returned. “There we go, just sent you a picture. Should get to you in a moment. Try to figure out where I am.”

Aziraphale’s phone chimed and buzzed, letting him know that Crowley’s photograph had reached him. He opened it, and couldn’t quite suppress his smile as Crowley’s face, perfectly angled to flatter his features, filled his screen.

“You seem to be in an office of some sort,” he observed.

“Ah, but whose?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know, would I? I hardly pay attention to what kinds of stationery the MPs and their staff keep on hand these days.”

“There are little hints around the room. I think you could put it together.”

“I don’t particularly care to.”

“ . . . Yeah, I don’t blame you, I suppose.”

“How long is this project of yours likely to take?” asked Aziraphale with a long-suffering sigh.

“Mmmmwelllll, there are a lot of moving parts and variables . . . A little demonic influence here and there will help things along, of course, but I still have a lot of little things to bring together. I don’t know . . . a couple of months?”

“Mm. And given that this is the sort of project I’d likely want absolutely no part of, I imagine I won’t be seeing much of you during that time?” He hoped that the devices transmitting his voice to Crowley’s ear weren’t failing to properly convey the perfect, artful blend of irritation and injury in his tone.

“Well, actually, I think you’d probably like— . . . well, it really wouldn’t be interesting to you up until the end bit, I suppose,” Crowley admitted. “But no, no, I’ll still have plenty of time to see you. I’m still in town, after all. And even on days where I’m particularly up to my neck in things, well, we have our phones, don’t we?”

“I suppose we do,” Aziraphale grumbled.

“Tell you what, let’s make a little pact, then. I’ll send you little daily update photos as I go along — nothing you’d disapprove of, just interesting parts of my day, you know. And you can send some back my way.” 

“Hmph. You’re just trying to get me using the mobile telephone more, aren’t you?”

“A photo a day? Or even a text a day. Just a little ‘hello’ from you. Otherwise I’m liable to get lonely and start missing the sight of you. I’ve grown spoiled this past while.”

“You _could_ just abandon the project.”

“That’s no fun. I swear to you, I’ll be in touch with you all day. You’ll be sick of me. All I ask is one little text per day in return.”

“Oh, I hate texting. It’s so time-consuming, I might as well just call.”

“Won’t always be able to answer a call. There’s a speech-to-text feature, you know. It’s like having the device take dictation for you. I’ll show you tonight.” His voice dropped down into that tonal range that always gave Aziraphale a little shiver. “I promise if you humour me, I’ll ensure you’re very fairly compensated for your time.” 

With a quiet little gasp, Aziraphale whispered into the phone, “You don’t mean . . . another magic show?”

“You know, it’s the strangest thing, but I just found a spare pair of tickets to tonight’s Magic Circle in a bin. Someone must’ve had to cancel their plans. Miraculous.”

Aziraphale kept enough dignity about him not to make any noises of excitement, although he wouldn’t have been surprised if Crowley could hear him wiggling in his chair. “You have a deal. When should I expect you?”

“Show starts at eight. I’ll meet you at the shop at six.”

“I’ll be sure to get my notebook ready!”

“Speech-to-text really isn’t that complicated, Aziraphale—”

“No, no, for the _show_! To take notes!”

There was a sigh over the line. “I’ll see you later.”

“Goodbye, dear!” Aziraphale hung up the rotary telephone, then smiled down at his mobile.

“You know,” he said to the device, “I think I am starting to like you a little bit.”


	3. Chapter 3

It had been three weeks since the magic show, and in that time, Aziraphale had seen Crowley in person only twice more. Only twice! The first time was a week after the show, during which Aziraphale spent most of the evening showing Crowley how he _thought_ some of the tricks they’d seen were done. The second time was a week and a half after that, because Crowley needed to prove to Aziraphale that he wasn’t avoiding him so he wouldn’t have to watch him practice more magic tricks, and that he really had just been caught up in his project.

“I lose track of time,” he told Aziraphale. “I keep getting new ideas to add on to it, or finding out about new rules I have to circumvent or distract people from. This idea of mine would have been a lot easier to implement a few centuries ago. I’m not really complaining — makes it more of a challenge — but this was never meant to be that grand a scheme. I’m just too invested to quit now. And it’s coming along well enough.” He flashed his teeth in a broad grin. “Getting curious about what it is yet?”

“Not really, no,” said Aziraphale.

“ . . . All right, fair enough.” Crowley looked a tiny bit taken aback and even mildly injured by Aziraphale’s instant and blunt reply, but bounced back fairly quickly. He returned to their original topic. “And anyway, I’ve been sending you plenty of texts and pictures throughout the day. Even a few little videos! It’s like I’m just in the next room, really.”

“Well, lately, you keep sending me pictures of food, specifically,” Aziraphale explained, distress lining his features just thinking about it. “And it all looks delightful, but then I get peckish. But I don’t find eating alone to be nearly as satisfying, so I just end up . . . sitting alone at the table, feeling rather empty.”

Crowley grimaced. “All right, I won’t do that anymore,” he promised. “I’ll send selfies and pictures of the people I’m working with. They’ll love it. It’ll be fine.”

“Just . . . don’t go incriminating yourself in anything,” sighed Aziraphale. “If I learn you’re working with some mobster who then goes on to murder someone, I _will_ be honour-bound to give any photographs you send me over to the police, and any embarrassment or inconvenience you suffer after that is out of my hands.”

“I’m not working with the mafia,” Crowley told him, scrunching up his nose as if the idea was preposterous. Then he seemed to reconsider, and added, “I probably _should_ be working with the mafia.” He thought on this more. “ . . . I wonder if I could get in touch with someone in the mafia.” Then he shook his head. “ . . . No. No, they’d want to control the whole thing and they have no concept of the _vision_ behind it. I’m _not_ working with the mafia.”

After that little diversion, Crowley turned a knife-sharp grin on Aziraphale. “You _should_ send photos to the police, though. Send as many as you like. Give them my number. I’ll invite them personally to the grand opening.”

“I thought you didn’t like the police.”

“Oh, I don’t.”

They spent the rest of the night debating ethics and waxing philosophical, which ranked highly among their favourite shared pastimes and therefore was a very nice time. But the sun rose before Aziraphale even noticed how long they’d been talking, and Crowley took his leave after a goodbye kiss that left Aziraphale just dazed enough that he forgot to protest his leaving in the first place.

Later that same day, Aziraphale belatedly sent his first photo to Crowley. It was a simple, front-facing portrait, which had still taken a few tries before he got one that he felt looked friendly enough to send.

A few minutes later, his phone chimed and buzzed. A text from Crowley.

“There’s the smile that always lights up my day,” it read. “And right there on my very favourite person, too. What a lucky coincidence.”

Aziraphale spent the next hour blushing and smiling uncontrollably, and reading the text over and over again. Crowley had gotten progressively freer with compliments since their retirement, but this was shameless flattery. 

And Aziraphale loved it.

Over the next several days, Crowley received an increasing number of photos from Aziraphale with each passing day. Included among these were photos of things Aziraphale simply wanted to share, like his lunch, or a new book he’d found, or an interesting spiderweb. But mostly, they were pictures of Aziraphale himself.

At first, they were more simple head-and-shoulder portraits of himself. But he started getting diminishing returns on investment for each of the admittedly similar-looking photos he sent Crowley’s way. Near-sonnets about his smile or his eyes turned to quick little one-sentence flirtations, turned to single-word compliments, turned to simple red hearts — which were sweet, but not as satisfying. Aziraphale decided he needed to start getting more creative about it.

As an angel, he had no need to buy a selfie stick to get a shot of himself from a distance — a good thing in his case, because he had never heard of a selfie stick. He set the phone in the air above his sofa and set about taking some shots of himself going about his day — reorganizing his gramophone records, making and drinking some tea, and suchlike. Most of these he ended up deleting, but there was a small handful that had enough of a cosy, homely feel to them that he felt Crowley would appreciate them. He sent those over the span of a few hours on a Tuesday, and Crowley’s replies ranged from conversationally asking him what kind of tea he was drinking, to romantically waxing poetic about how the late morning sunlight should feel honoured to land upon his features through the window. In reply to the latter, Aziraphale sent a photo of himself blowing a kiss at the camera.

“You’re certainly getting chummy with the new phone these past few days,” Crowley’s next text observed. Then he sent another one almost immediately afterward that read, “You really have to stop distracting me with your beauty and charm, angel. I’ll never get anything done if I keep getting heart-melting pictures like that one.”

Aziraphale’s natural response was to politely text back, “All right. I’ll leave you to it, then.” It took him until the following day to realize that Crowley probably hadn’t intended him to take that as a serious complaint.

On the other hand, Aziraphale _did_ have a complaint. Crowley was still spending far too little time in his physical company. Sending pictures and texts back and forth was becoming fun, but it still hardly compared to the fun they had whenever they were properly together. Not that he had any suspicion that Crowley meant anything by it, of course. Lord knew Aziraphale was just as guilty of getting too deeply invested in one thing or another and disappearing completely into it for days or weeks at a time. It was easy to lose track of the hours when you’d lived so many millions of them. Still, they’d only just freed themselves from their employers barely seven years beforehand, and had only begun settling into more intimate and experimental relations with one another even less time ago than that. Aziraphale was rather keen to enjoy as much of it as possible, seeing as it was all still so new and exciting.

And anyway, from a purely angelic standpoint (even one who technically no longer served Heaven), he considered it his celestial duty to properly distract Crowley from whatever mischief he was getting up to. It was for the good of whatever poor humans he was planning to bother with this project of his.

An idea of sorts was taking root in Aziraphale’s mind. It would need a little time and some additional information before he could act on it properly, but he decided to test the waters a bit in the meantime.

He dictated a text into his phone. “Darling,” he said, “I miss you.”

A few minutes later, he received a reply. “Why don’t we meet for dinner tonight at that fascinating little hole in the wall you told me about the other day? The one with the cheesecake in the window. I’ll be here another few hours yet but I should be able to wrap up by sundown.”

Aziraphale dictated his next text while wearing a rather performative pout, and realized only after sending that texts don’t convey pouts well. Or tone in general, really.

“That doesn’t solve the problem of missing you right now.”

In reply, Crowley sent a picture of himself giving a rather smouldering little smirk at . . . well, technically the camera, Aziraphale knew, but he was sure it was very much intended for him. The photo was followed with a simple, five-word text: “Patience is a virtue, angel.”

The waters seemed very temperate indeed. 

Aziraphale sent him a picture of the pout he’d missed earlier, and Crowley responded with, “You’re adorable and the light of my life. You’re also over six thousand years old and I know you’re very capable of waiting a few short hours. I just need to sort out this one extremely crucial element of my master plan and then I promise I’m all yours.”

Aziraphale sent back a reply consisting only of, “Hmm.” Then he left the bookshop, closing up with a grin. Crowley’s next few texts went mysteriously unanswered.


	4. Chapter 4

“Hmm?” Crowley texted back. After twenty minutes, he sent another. “What does ‘Hmm’ mean?”

Ten minutes after that, he sent another text: “Aziraphale?”

Five more minutes passed, and Crowley’s attention was fully diverted away from the job applications he’d been looking over. Aziraphale’s sudden silence was a far more pressing matter. Realistically speaking, it could mean anything — that he’d gotten distracted by his latest read, that he’d decided to go somewhere for lunch and forgotten his phone, that he’d fumbled and dropped his phone, that a customer was bothering him . . . any manner of perfectly mundane and very typically Aziraphale things, really. But Crowley, despite smelling no particular danger in the air, couldn’t help constantly returning to the idea that it meant one of only two things: either that something had happened to his angel, or that Aziraphale was upset with him. He liked neither one of these scenarios.

He decided to try one more text. “I promise, tonight’s all about you. Ask and it’s yours.” Guilt gnawed at him. He hated that. Demons were supposed to be free of the whole guilt thing. Came with the job description. Sure, he was an unemployed demon now, but he still liked to think of himself as something of an entrepreneur in the business. An independent artisan in an otherwise monopolized field. A crafter of gourmet, small-batch chaos. Guilt cramped his hustle — especially when that guilt centred around the possibility that he might have upset an angel.

When he still hadn’t heard back from him a few further minutes later, he did what he’d been trying very hard not to do and pulled up the tracking app, muttering to himself that it might not even help anything. If something _had_ happened to him, history had already proven that it was entirely likely to have happened right at the shop.

But the tracking app didn’t put Aziraphale at A. Z. Fell & Co. It put him a few blocks away, at a clothing boutique.

“What’s he doing there? He hates prêt-à-porter,” he muttered to himself. 

There was a knock at his door, and a young woman poked her head in. “Mister Crowley, they’ve arrived with the stereo system.”

It took him a moment to look up from his phone. “Yeah, fine . . . oh. Did you check to make sure the dials go up to eleven?” he asked her.

She rolled her eyes, and Crowley wasn’t sure whether he felt slighted or pleased. “Yes, I did. And yes, they do.”

“Great! Tell them to go ahead and install it.” He looked down at his phone again. “I might have something to attend to, so. Just text me if anything comes up.”

“I don’t know your number and I don’t want to,” she told him.

He grinned broadly. “Oh, you’re getting a raise the _second_ we open.”

“Whatever.” She left with a snap of her chewing gum.

Satisfied that he didn’t need to monitor anything too closely for the moment, he dialed Aziraphale.

After a rather unnecessary six rings, Aziraphale picked up. “Hello, Crowley,” he said, with what Crowley found to be an unsettling amount of warmth and cheerfulness. It threw him, and he wasn’t certain how to respond to it.

“Hello, Aziraphale,” he said, with a forced grin. Might as well go for charming. “Just, uhm, thought I’d take a break and give you a call. Realized I hadn’t heard your voice in a while. How are you? What are you up to?”

“I’m fine, dear. Actually, I’m having a lovely time,” said Aziraphale, and from his tone Crowley could tell he was being entirely sincere. “I’m _shopping!_ ”

“Yeah? What for?”

“Well, you know, this and that. How’s your project coming along?”

Crowley couldn’t help cracking a very genuine grin at this. “It’s great,” he practically gushed. “It’s really good. I’d tell you more but at this point I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Why do I feel as though it won’t be a particularly _nice_ surprise?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I think you’d like it.”

“Hmm.” That same noncommittal response, now in full audio. His tone of voice gave away nothing. If anything he sounded sort of distracted.

“So, we, uh,” Crowley cleared his throat. “We’re on for tonight, yeah?”

“Oh, well, I hope so,” Aziraphale confirmed, putting Crowley much more at ease. “Rather looking forward to it, actually.”

“So am I.” Crowley’s voice was soft against the receiver. And stayed that way even as it took on a bit of a rumbling undertone. “You’ve been so patient, Aziraphale. I intend to thank you properly.”

Aziraphale chuckled slightly, which took Crowley aback somewhat. “Er, yes, well. What time were you thinking?”

“Give me until 6? I can pick you up wherever you need.”

“What if I meet you?”

Crowley blinked. “Uuhhh, fine, where?”

“Where, indeed?” Aziraphale sounded rather pleased with himself, in that same unnerving, mysterious way that The Almighty sometimes used to. This verged on being the very opposite of endearing, except that it was Aziraphale and Crowley was willing to forgive a lot when it came to him. 

“ . . . No, but seriously, where should we meet?”

“Let me worry about that, my dear. We have our telephone tracking devices, after all. I’ll find you.” As he talked, Aziraphale sounded like he was grunting a little, as if mildly uncomfortable or trying to adjust something.

“All right,” said Crowley with a shrug. “However you like it. Just . . . one thing. Meet me _outside_ the building. We’re still getting set up here and I’d rather you not see what we’re working on until it’s ready for its debut. I promise it’s worth the wait. _Everything_ will be worth the wait.”

“What happens if I’m not in a waiting mood?” Aziraphale asked it in the same tone of voice that he’d typically use to ask him things like, ‘I see, and how do you _know_ the books were successfully destroyed?’ or ‘What would you say to some _crêpes_?’

“. . . Disappointment, I expect,” said Crowley, cautiously. “On your part, and on mine.” He emphasized the last three words with a particular set of his jaw that he knew for certain Aziraphale would either hear through the phone or, failing that, feel in the ether. “ _Outside_ the building, you understand? It’s important to me.”

“Yes, yes, fine.” The dismissive tone on Aziraphale’s end was oddly reassuring, in that it sounded like his willingness to respect his wishes had never been in question in the first place. Though, in that case, Crowley didn’t understand his original question and was left wondering what he meant by it. 

“I have to hang up on you now, dear,” Aziraphale carried on before Crowley could inquire further, “I want to send you a picture and I don’t know how to do that while the talking screen is on.”

A new smile broke across Crowley’s features, and he shook his head. “Go on, then,” he said.

“Right-o. Goodbye!” 

A few minutes later, the photo Aziraphale had promised came in, and Crowley almost dropped his phone.

It was clearly taken in a fitting stall, in front of a mirror. Aziraphale was mostly wearing his usual, smart attire, although his bow tie was undone, as were most of the buttons of his shirt down to about the middle of his chest. Which, notably, had quite a bit more cleavage than he typically sported. A bit of something bluish and lacy peeked out from under his shirt — Crowley gathered it to be a push-up brassiere, judging by what it was doing with his lovely, plush chest. Before Crowley had quite collected himself, he briefly imagined sticking his face through the screen and falling right into those soft mounds of flesh. It was something he was very much considering doing right then and there, but he remembered that Aziraphale had likely taken the photo several or more minutes ago, and could easily have buttoned himself back up by now. 

Worst of all was the alluring way he was baring his neck with the tiniest, smug little hint of a smirk on his face. The angel knew exactly what he was doing to him.

“A little preview of tonight?” Crowley guessed over text.

The reply was another picture, with the same arrangement of clothing, although Aziraphale was bending further forward to emphasize his enhanced curves all the more, and making a face so elegantly seductive it would have had even Marilyn Monroe enthusiastically slapping down a stack of notes for lessons.

“Now, how am I supposed to concentrate on finishing up here when you’re filling my head with visions like that?” It was the best Crowley could come up with, and it frankly shamed him as both a lover and a demon. He’d desperately wanted to match Aziraphale’s coquetry with equal teasing and temptation, but his mind had sort of shut down and was diverting all power to restarting itself, all while his sensory memory was replaying every moment he’d ever had a chance to run his eyes, hands, lips, tongue, or any other part of himself over the paradise of supple flesh Aziraphale kept so modestly hidden under his clothing. Honestly, it was a heroic effort of willpower that he’d managed to cobble _that_ text together. Most of what was otherwise running through his mind was something along the lines of “angel mine so pretty love give now love soft sexy mine love mine mine _mine_ M̶̢͈͈̮͛ͭ̔̚͝ͅI͂̄̍̅ͧ̓̑͟͠Ņ̠̭͖͍͖̹̗͚̘̺͇̮̫E̛͕͖̲̩͖̕͜.” 

At least, that was roughly as much as could be parsed by human devices or human minds.

But it was fine, he told himself with a cleansing breath. He’d have plenty of time over the next few hours to cook up some good, sultry one-liners and plan his revenge. And, if nothing else, he was usually pretty good at improvising when the pressure was on.

There was no immediate response from Aziraphale. Crowley took that to mean that he had, again, adorably interpreted Crowley’s playful admonishment as a genuine request to leave him alone for a while. Which was fine — it would give him time to think. And plot. And perhaps fantasize, a little. 

_. . . And_ get some work done, too.

But it wasn’t a full hour before his phone buzzed again. Another photo that left him double-taking, although in this case it was because at first he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at.

Or rather, he knew what he was looking at, but he wasn’t sure _why_ he was looking at it.

He was seeing the inside of his own car, from the driver’s seat. It was a view he knew particularly well, but one he wouldn’t have suspected Aziraphale would want any knowledge of. 

Probably just a cute way of letting him know he was outside, Crowley reasoned.

“You’re here very early,” he texted, “I can pop out for a quick hello but I’m still finishing up some things here. The little eatery you’re parked in front of supposedly serves fantastic milkshakes, if you want to wait somewhere other than a hot car.”

Before he could even stand up to head outside, another photo arrived. Almost the same, except in the centre foreground there was now a large cone of ice cream, some of which was beginning to dribble down the side. Aziraphale’s hand - recently manicured, from the looks - was clearly visible holding it.

“Not to worry, my dear,” came his next text. “I’ve already found a nice, creamy treat.”

Crowley glared at his phone.

“You know how I feel about food in the car,” he texted back. As soon as he hit send, he stood up, kicking his chair back and stomping towards the door. All the while, he muttered to himself, “I knew it. I knew he was upset, and now he’s getting passive-aggressive like he always does, and he’s got the _nerve_ , the _absolute gall_ to bring _my car_ into it and—”

His phone buzzed again, and he chuckled through gritted teeth. His hand was already on the doorknob, and he briefly considered ignoring the newest message and riding the momentum of his ire out of the building to save his beloved Bentley from one pouty angel's sticky-fingered machinations. However, Crowley’s two biggest weaknesses (curiosity and Aziraphale) worked in tandem to stop him up short and compel him to check his phone.

This resulted in him slumping against the door as if punched, his eyes fixed wide on the screen, as a guttural noise stuttered out from the depths of his throat.

The newest message was another photo. Rather than facing the windscreen, this one faced the driver’s seat — or, more accurately, its occupant. Aziraphale’s eyes were out of frame, with the camera framing the space between the end of his nose and the end of his sternum. His shirt was fully unbuttoned, with that ever-inviting cleavage now on full display, hugged by a soft blue, lace-covered brassiere that alluringly complemented and enhanced his complexion. 

The display of Aziraphale’s enticing curves wasn’t even the part that had Crowley so stupefied, however. What had really done it was the ice cream. Not the stuff in the cone. The stuff being scooped up from the cone with Aziraphale’s pink little tongue. The melted goo that was all over his chin. The globs that had dripped down from his face to a soft landing on his bosom.

A new text came in just underneath. “I suppose I am making rather a mess, aren’t I? Oh, dearie me.”

Crowley shook his head. “Oh, oh-hoh. I see. I see. Thisss is how he’ss playing it, isss he?” he rasped to absolutely no one as he pulled himself back upright. Not that being wise to Aziraphale’s little game gave Crowley any particular inclination to tear his gaze away from his screen. In fact, he very intentionally took a final few seconds to really appreciate every little detail before forcing himself to twist the doorknob.

“Fff _fuck_ , I love it when he’s _messsy_ ,” he hissed on his way out the door. “Just not in my _car_!”

He ignored a few “Mister Crowley!”s on his way out of the building, barking over his shoulder as he reached the main entrance, “Just text me, my number’s on half of everything I’ve signed over the last month.”

He burst out the front door and sauntered across the street to his car, keeping his face stony with a touch of a scowl.

“All right, get out,” he said as he opened the driver’s side door, only to realize there was nobody there. He ducked his head in, examining the whole interior to make sure Aziraphale wasn’t just hiding in the back, but found only one small something in a half-crumpled pile on the front passenger seat.

Something tartan.

Crowley squinted at it before picking it up. Aziraphale’s handkerchief.

A text followed. “No need to fret, dear heart. I’ve cleared out of your car with my snack. It does seem I‘ve dropped something, however.”

Crowley pulled his head out of his car and looked around, but could see no sign of Aziraphale anywhere around. A brief sniff of the handkerchief told him nothing new, giving him only the usual scents of tea, old wooden shelves, various sugary treats, and a particular ethereal musk that belonged uniquely to Aziraphale, plus a fresh glob of vanilla. He gave the interior of his Bentley one last inspection, but the leather of the seats showed no signs of staining, stickiness, or hasty miracles. He _did_ detect a hint of ozone on the air, which indicated that Aziraphale had left the car through supernatural means. The smell was faint, however. He’d likely been long gone since before sending Crowley that first picture.

Teleportation — at least, the kind that didn’t involve passing through Heaven or Hell along the way — wasn't generally something that one could accomplish over long distances without expending an enormous amount of energy. There wasn’t enough disturbance in the air to indicate this had happened, and Crowley didn’t think Aziraphale would waste that much effort on a game of silly buggers anyway. Depending on how long ago he’d been and gone, he likely wasn’t too far away.

Crowley called Aziraphale.

“Hello, Crowley!” was the gently-spoken greeting on the other end as soon as Aziraphale answered.

“I don’t know what it is you’re playing at, angel, but you’d better not be where I told you not to be.”

“The car or the building?” asked Aziraphale. His voice was barely more than a whisper. “Because I’m in neither.”

“Good. Now—”

“I am starting to think, though, that perhaps I’m not quite properly dressed for my current locale.”

Crowley took in a breath he didn’t exactly need but, in the moment, very much wanted. He held it for a beat, then released. “Where are you?” he asked.

“Can’t talk now, I’m afraid. Got to run. Very quietly. Do feel free to track my location on your telephone.”

“It took you longer to tell me that than if you’d just—” He heard a click, followed by dead air.

With a shake of his head, Crowley shut the door to his car and started making his way back to work. “Nah. Not playing anymore,” he resolved. “He can run about town all he likes until I’m done for the day.”

Predictably, however, a new message arrived just as he reached the entrance. Crowley, also predictably, accepted his fate in that moment and made absolutely no effort to resist checking.

Another photo of Aziraphale. This time he was standing in front of a set of bookshelves, clothed only in his coat, his glasses, and a full set of lingerie. The bra Crowley recognized, but now he had a view of the full matched set, which included a lacy little pair of panties, a garter belt stretched sweetly over his soft belly, and stockings that hugged his thighs just a little too tightly. He held one of his favourite fountain pens to his pouting lips, and was looking up at the stacks to his left in a way that was clearly entirely for show, unless Aziraphale had taken a sudden interest in commercial law. 

Crowley just let himself smile at the photograph as he waited for the accompanying caption, which came in such a timely manner that he was able to point to the screen and make a quiet “pew!” noise with his mouth at the exact instant that it popped up.

“It’s so dull waiting for you, my love. Thought perhaps I could take comfort in some new reads, but only you can scratch this particular itch, I’m afraid.”

Crowley cheerfully opened the door in front of him, poked his head in, and called, “Off to the library. Anyone who follows or bothers me will have a very unpleasant surprise soon afterwards. Keep up the great work!” Then he made his way back to his car. 

As he settled into the driver’s seat, he recorded and sent an audio message for Aziraphale, mostly because he didn’t think a text would be able to make a proper shiver run down the angel’s spine the way he knew his voice could. The message consisted of only six words: 

“I’m going to ssscratch it _raw_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s two more chapters and an epilogue left to go on this fic, and they're in progress! The fifth chapter is written but still needs proofreading. The sixth chapter is pure smut and needs a little finessing before I can post it. The epilogue is a little bit of fluff. Sorry this is coming out in pieces but please think of it as an extended gift that rolls out into the new year! I’ll be carrying on working on and releasing the fic this week!


	5. Chapter 5

The thing about tracking apps — at least, any of the ones that Crowley was aware of — is that they only get about as precise as the building a person is in. They won’t tell you exactly where in that building the person is located. This rendered the tracking app about as useful to him once he stepped through the door as the little chime that went off in the ether as soon as he crossed the threshold, letting him know that another supernatural entity was in the building he’d just entered. A library is a big place, with a lot of private little corners. Crowley would have to rely on hints from Aziraphale’s most recent photo, as well as his other demonic senses, if he wanted anything more specific than ‘Aziraphale is around here somewhere, and likely knows I’m here, too’.

Narrowing it down to the stacks was simple enough, and it didn’t take him long from there to find the exact spot where Aziraphale had taken that last picture. Aziraphale himself was not there, but Crowley wasn’t expecting him to be. What _was_ there were traces of his scent, which Crowley only picked up because he was specifically sniffing for it. While faint, it was still a little stronger and more concentrated than he was expecting, and he soon found the reason tucked between two books: Aziraphale’s bow tie. 

Crowley snapped a photo of it draped over his hand and sent it to Aziraphale, followed by a message that read, “Really now, angel, it isn’t like you to be so careless with your things. Especially when you know I like you all tied off with a pretty bow.”

The responding text took a little longer to get to him than usual, which amused him. It likely meant that the rules of the library were forcing Aziraphale to manually type out his messages instead of dictating them. He used the time to follow what scant whiffs of him he could pick up to wherever he might be, or at least wherever he’d last been. 

“Is that where I left it? Thank you for finding it, dearest. Forget my head, next. I think I may have lost something else as well.”

“Really? Why don’t you come meet me, then? We can look for it together.”

“I think carrying on this way is much more fun, don’t you?” was the reply. Shortly thereafter came a second message. “Look what I found, Crowley.”

This was followed by a new photo, in which Aziraphale lay stretched out, still in his lingerie but without his coat, over the metallic grating on the floor. He had a large book open in one hand, with the open page displaying a bit of erotic art from the 16th century that Crowley, cheeks suddenly aflame, recognized as one of his own private commissions in Aziraphale’s likeness. Aziraphale’s expression was back to that half-lidded, seductive look he’d been wearing in the fitting room, with a bit of added, playful knowingness in the tilt of his head and the slight, questioning quirk of his eyebrows. His free hand, meanwhile, looked to be trailing lightly down his torso.

There were a lot of ways Crowley could have responded, but he decided the best one would be to go ahead and own up to it. “I told that hack to destroy that piece. I’d given him plenty of other portraits of you to work from and he didn’t get your likeness right at all.”

“I’d say it was recognizable enough.”

“The real you is infinitely more exquisite. Only good to come of that painting was seeing you pose so delectably with it 500 years later. Lovely gift, that. Almost makes up for how ill-behaved you’ve been today.”

Crowley was being entirely honest, but laying it on as thick as he could, as well. There was a very specific reason behind it. Scent wasn’t the only sense he was using to track Aziraphale, nor the clues to his most recent location laid out in his selfies. He also had his senses on alert for any unusual spikes of emotion in the environment, such as, oh, excitement or lust. Especially soon after any message he sent. He sent that last one just as he’d arrived in the Art History aisle Aziraphale had been reclining in, and while waiting for his response, he noted something soft and blue draped over a rung in the floor grating. He carefully plucked it up, confirming with a smirk that it was one of the suspenders from Aziraphale’s stockings. 

He felt a sudden, somewhat distant prickling of excitement coming from what was likely a couple of floors up as he stood and snapped another photo of himself, this time pressing both the bow tie and the little piece of lingerie up just under his nose and against his lips, gently inhaling while casting a positively molten gaze at the camera. He sent it, then followed it with, “Every hunter who ever lived could only dream of prey that smelled as good as mine.”

“Your prey is clever, vile serpent,” Aziraphale replied, after another telltale burst of excitement set Crowley off in its direction.

“I do hope he’s at least clever enough to have taken into account that libraries have cameras, too, now,” Crowley texted back as he climbed the nearest stairwell. “I’m loving these little gifts you keep sending me, but not if I have to share them with some human security guard.”

“I’m given to believe that security systems do, occasionally, malfunction.”

“That would certainly be inconvenient for our guard friend, but for the best, I think. You’re mine and mine alone.”

Another lusty little spike of emotion, followed soon after by a new photo of Aziraphale. In this one he was pressed up in a corner between two perpendicular shelving units, looking deceptively small and vulnerable, and biting his lip. Most enticingly of all, he had his wings out, and had them folded prettily around himself.

“Where am I now, Crowley?” was his next message.

Well, he certainly wasn’t in the corner the picture showed. Crowley didn’t even have to examine the books in the background to confirm it. He’d gathered by now that Aziraphale was taking photographs two or three ahead and keeping them in a queue to toss at Crowley in timed intervals, giving himself time to stay ahead in the chase. Crowley carried on tracking Aziraphale through more demonic means instead. He reckoned one more set of stairs ought to put them on the same floor.

“Why don’t you tell me, angel?” he sent back, quieting his footfalls and muting his phone as he made his way to the next floor. He kept texting to keep Aziraphale’s concentration on his phone, rather than his surroundings. 

“Clearly you want to be found.” “You can’t wait for me to get my hands on you, can you?” “I bet you’re vibrating with the anticipation of it.” “You’re aching to surrender to your demon, aren’t you, angel?” “You’ve had to wait so long already. I’m sorry, my divine love. Give yourself to me and I’ll make it right.”

A few steps out from the top of the stairs, he heard a sound he’d know anywhere: the bubble of a small, unsuccessfully-stifled giggle from Aziraphale’s throat. Three aisles down.

“It’s really quite darling of you to try and take control of my little game,” read Aziraphale’s next message. “I must say, though, that your mastery of temptation loses something over text messaging.”

Crowley crept as silently as demonically possible towards Aziraphale’s position, even dampening his emotions with a slow, silent, cleansing intake of breath in case Aziraphale was keeping track of him the same way.

“I know full well you’re the one doing the tempting today, my little coquette. So when are you going to let me take what you so desperately want me to have?” He sent the message while staring directly at the back of Aziraphale’s head. He was wearing his coat again, but his trousers, shirt and waistcoat were folded neatly beside him on the floor, alongside his shoes.

Crowley watched him fiddle with his obscured phone for a moment. Then looked down at his own phone and saw the message come in. “When you can catch it for yourself, I imagine,” it said.

“Well,” he intoned about six inches from Aziraphale’s left ear, softly but just loud enough to startle. “That’s simple enough, then.”

Aziraphale whipped around to look at him, wide-eyed and gasping, and Crowley shoved him up against the stacks.

“You are positively adorable when you’re startled, did you know that?” Crowley murmured, pressing closer. “I’m actually a little disappointed you didn’t scream. Think I’d like to spend the rest of today making you do that. Over and over again.” He grinned in what he hoped was a very rakish way.

Aziraphale’s eyes glimmered dreamily back at him, and he looked to be half-swooning as he breathed, “Will you really?”

Crowley’s grin felt like it was about to melt into something sweeter and a little more embarrassing, but it began to sour a bare second later when he noticed the tiniest hint of something a little off in Aziraphale’s tone. Like sarcasm, or scepticism, or simply a challenge. He also noticed that his breath smelled mostly like a musty, old book. In fact, everything smelled like that.

A breeze picked up between them. There were no open windows anywhere nearby. He heard pages flapping, and suddenly Aziraphale grinned large and made a “Phwoaaahhhh!” noise while gesturing as grandly as the space between them allowed. Then he disappeared in a puff of smoke. A hardbound book on ventriloquism remained in his place for a moment before dropping noisily to the floor.

It took a full minute for a deeply confused Crowley to figure out what had just happened. He picked up the book and flipped open the back cover, finding a lock of Aziraphale’s hair pressed up against the spine on the inside. A taglock. He’d created a decoy of himself. An animate dummy. Of course. The real Aziraphale wouldn’t have been able to miracle away — Crowley’s grip on him had been both physical and ethereal. But since he was really just holding a transfigured book, all the real Aziraphale had to do was pull away the magic sustaining the illusion.

“ . . . Wait, you were throwing your _emotions??_ ” he barked, his voice echoing through the silent stacks. Then he added, even more incredulously, “You can _do_ that?!”

He heard Aziraphale’s laughter again among a series of ‘ssshh!’s. The laughter, specifically, was coming from the floor just below. It was warm and affectionate laughter, not the mocking kind. Even so, as Crowley bent to pick up Aziraphale’s abandoned clothes, he couldn’t help grumbling to himself about certain smart-arse mood-killers who might just have to forget about dinner tonight.

Making his way back down the stairs, he bypassed the floor he’d heard Aziraphale’s voice coming from completely. This had the benefit of confirming for him that the voice had been real, because as his own footfalls carried on down the next flight, he heard another set of footsteps hastening in his direction, and caught Aziraphale’s scent growing stronger, as well.

“Crowley?”

Crowley paused on the bottom step, and took a moment to scratch his chin before looking back up at Aziraphale. He’d buttoned up his coat around himself, but he still had rather more skin showing than most humans would likely consider to be altogether decent. To Crowley he was an absolute vision, but he wasn’t about to mention it. Not yet, anyway.

When the silence stretched on long enough, Aziraphale held up his hand and wiggled his fingers in greeting. “Hello,” he said with an awkward smile.

“Hi,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale tiptoed down the stairs to meet him, and Crowley waited patiently for him to do so, but said nothing even once Aziraphale was on the step directly above his.

“So . . . . ” Aziraphale shifted from one hip to the other for a moment, then leaned in a little closer and informed him, “You’ve found me.”

“Have I? Looks more like you gave yourself up.” Crowley didn’t like how nervous Aziraphale was starting to look, so he offered him a slightly playful raise of an eyebrow. He just wanted him to squirm a little, not spiral into anxiety.

Aziraphale still looked a little disquieted, but he breathed a small sigh of relief. “Worried for a moment that I might have taken it too far,” he admitted. “Didn’t want you to leave without me in a huff. With my clothes.” He reached for the little pile in Crowley’s arms. Crowley twisted his body away to shield Aziraphale’s clothing from his reach, but cracked a bit of a lopsided grin as he did so.

“Wouldn’t say you took it too far,” he said. “Clever little trick, if I’m honest. Just that you threw me right when I was about to take things . . . quite a bit further.” He shrugged, with perhaps a bit of a performative sulk. “Sort of killed the mood, you know. Felt like I’d interrupted my work and spent all that time chasing you around for just a practical joke.”

Aziraphale’s eyes went large, and he gripped Crowley’s arm. “No— No, no! No, Crowley I was very much trying to— that is to say, I wanted to—” He glanced up and down the stairs, making sure nobody else had crept up on them, before lowering his voice and saying, “Darling, I was just as hot and bothered as you, and that was very much the point. I just didn’t want things to get out of hand. I can miracle everyone to look in the other direction if I want to prance about the aisles in lingerie, but . . . well, I don’t think I’d want to actually . . . _make love_ here. I think we’d both get very distracted and. And very _noisy_. We could be discovered. Humans are very particular about the etiquette of this sort of thing and I don’t want to upset them.”

Crowley couldn’t help chuckling a little. “So why drag me here in the first place, then? Hm?”

With a sheepish little shrug of a shoulder, Aziraphale said, “Lots of little hiding places.” He loosened his grip on Crowley’s arm, and started tracing a little circle on it with his finger instead. “Just wanted a nice little game of ‘chase me, chase me’, you know, and none of our usual haunts were really big enough, private enough, or close enough to you for what I had in mind. Thought you might like it if I made things sort of . . . clever and creative.”

Crowley shifted everything he was carrying to one arm, so he could reach up and cup Aziraphale’s face in his hand. “I did like it,” he said. “I was very impressed.”

“ . . . Wanted you to have fun,” Aziraphale carried on, not quite able to look directly at Crowley.

“I did. Did you?”

“Rather a lot, yes,” he confessed, a little bashfully.

“So, why can’t you look at me, angel?”

Aziraphale took in a sharp breath, as if to say something, but then rethought it. His brow creased as he mulled it over. Then he said, “Now that we have all this time together, and so much freedom to . . . to fully explore the depth and breadth of what we mean to one another . . . well, I think I worry that you’ll soon tire of me.”

Both of Crowley’s eyebrows shot upward this time. “You what?”

“Well, you know, I like a very slow and quiet sort of life, and it’s not really your speed. I don’t want to bore you, Crowley.”

“Aziraphale, I’ve been butting my way into that ‘slow and quiet’ life of yours for six thousand years now. For the last two hundred years you’ve had to subtly nudge me out of the bookshop whenever I’ve overstayed my welcome, because I’ve never _actually_ wanted to leave. I think I’d know by now if I find you boring, and believe me I don’t.”

“It was different before. Before it was . . . it was clandestine, and there were so many questions in the air, so many things unsaid. It was all very exciting precisely because it wasn’t allowed. Now we’re free, and we don’t have to be constantly watching each other’s backs — at least, not quite so much. Without the constant danger there keeping us apart, and keeping things interesting when we _were_ around one another . . . well, maybe I’ll start to lose my appeal in your eyes.” He gestured vaguely in Crowley’s direction. “It hasn't even yet been a full decade and already you’ve become restless for a project to fill your time with. And you were so insistent about me catching up on mobile phones. Modernizing. So I could keep up with you. What if it gets to the point where I can’t?”

Crowley tossed Aziraphale’s belongings on the floor with a roll of his eyes and took his head in both hands. “Aziraphale,” he said, “Listen to me very carefully: 

“You were the angel who gave the First Weapon to humanity without your boss’ permission, after your boss had personally cast them out, because you worried for their safety. 

“You got yourself run out of town in ancient Syria because you got overly excited to show everyone the new blacksmithing techniques and makeup trends you’d picked up in another city and accidentally destabilized their entire way of life. 

“You joined the Knights of the Round Table despite abhorring the idea of being a soldier, primarily so you could connect with Merlin and get access to his personal library. 

“You traveled all the way to Paris while it was in the middle of a bloody revolution because you wanted crêpes, and refused to dress down a bit while you were there because ‘you have standards’. 

“You regularly used to arrange work meetings between us in horrendously open and unsafe public spaces because the ‘fun’ factor was more important to you. 

“You marched straight into a church full of Nazis on one woman’s word thinking you could double-cross them and have a laugh riot doing it. 

“You defended the Antichrist against Satan himself, and then against your own bosses, on the same day that you escaped heaven by possessing a human — which nobody knew angels could actually do until the exact moment you decided to give it a whirl. 

“ . . . _And_ you spent today conducting an impromptu lingerie photoshoot and seducing a demon in a public library because you got bored waiting for the demon to get done with work. 

“You are, quite frankly, the most recklessly impulsive person I have ever voluntarily kept in my company for longer than a decade or two. It is _actually_ more likely that I will perish from the stress involved in keeping you safe long before I ever, ever get bored of you, you precious, boundless font of surprises, scholarship, and love.” 

For good measure, Crowley crushed his lips against Aziraphales in a long and quite literally breathtaking kiss before Aziraphale could start nitpicking facts at him. He could taste the whole of Aziraphale's day up to this point, from the dusty air of the bookshop to the sticky-sweet ice cream cone in the hot, leathery interior of Crowley's Bentley. The tingle of every bit of anticipation, excitement, mischief, desire, and happiness the angel had felt up to that moment danced like little shocks of lightning around his tongue.

Once they broke apart he gasped, “Please, please take as many slow, quiet days as you like. Believe me, angel, I need the break any time I can get it.”

“ . . . Crowley,” sighed Aziraphale, his eyes misty and his smile overwhelming. He leaned in for another kiss, and they wound up thumping against the wall a few times as they shared in it. Pinned between Crowley and the wall as he was, Aziraphale took advantage of their position to wrap his legs around his hips. Crowley had no complaints, but he did have a question after a couple of minutes.

“I thought you said you didn’t want us getting too heated where innocent human eyes might see,” he murmured against Aziraphale’s lips. He gently rocked his hips into Aziraphale’s, quietly letting him know that, should his position have changed on the matter, Crowley was up for anything.

With a slightly regretful groan and a gentle nuzzle, Aziraphale nodded and unlatched his legs from around Crowley. “It’s true, I’d rather we didn’t.”

Crowley was still taking little nips at Aziraphale’s bottom lip even as he said, “All right. We won’t, then.” Pulling himself back, he snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale found himself fully and neatly dressed. “Follow me to the car. We’ll have our fun someplace else.”

“At home?” guessed Aziraphale, taking Crowley’s hand as they carried on down the stairwell. Crowley wasn’t actually sure whether he was meant to interpret ‘home’ to mean the bookshop, his flat, or the Bentley. He suspected it likely meant ‘any of the above’.

“Mm, no,” said Crowley, giving his hand a little squeeze. “Got another idea in mind.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so very sorry about the long delay on this part. I wasn’t at all planning on taking so long, but I ended up having to rewrite this chapter a full six times. And this sixth attempt, as you can see, sort of just kept going, until it was about as long as all the other chapters combined! Also, there were some unpleasant IRL things keeping me away that I won’t go into, and some other unpleasant IRL things you’re probably already well aware of and in the midst of, if you’re reading this in the year 2020 (Hello from self-isolation!). In any case, I do hope this chapter was worth the wait. <3
> 
> I've added notice of a 7th chapter to come. I want to add a wee epilogue on to the end of this, just to tie up a few final details. This shouldn't take nearly as long to post, since the part that was giving me so much grief is complete!

Blindfolding an angel requires slightly more work than blindfolding a human. 

The whole thing about angels having multiple heads or hundreds of eyes, however, is somewhat inaccurate. Actually, it’s just a bit of leftover misunderstanding from the early days, when a few newly-created, inexperienced, and poorly-trained angels came to Earth on business not knowing what they were supposed to look like, and simply choosing physical characteristics that they, personally, found pretty. After a few too many incidents ending with potential human heroes and prophets just screaming and crying and not doing what they were asked because they were too paralyzed by terror, Heaven took to mass producing ready-made humanoid bodies and assigning one to every angel.

Aziraphale, having been one of the first angels on Earth and having received proper instruction on physical manifestation and basic human anatomy beforehand, just found the whole thing horribly embarrassing.

But while Aziraphale had just the two eyes to worry about, he also had certain ethereal senses that needed dampening. After they exited the library and Crowley had convinced Aziraphale to let him tie his handkerchief around his eyes, he noted the angel smirking a little to himself in the passenger seat of the Bentley, so he made a point of occluding a few of his non-physical senses as well. This resulted in some pouting on Aziraphale’s end, but all in good fun, really. For good measure, he drove him on a winding, twisting path through most of London that doubled back on itself several times before actually landing them at their destination.

“Did you have to toy with my sense of balance as well?” Aziraphale complained as Crowley helped him out of the car. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have agreed to any of this if I thought it would lead to _motion sickness_ , for goodness’ sake.”

“Sorry. Didn’t want you relying on your internal compass,” said Crowley with a shrug. “Besides, I made sure to keep you from getting too nauseous. Didn’t want you losing your lunch in my car.”

There was a brief pause in which Aziraphale’s mouth was a thin line. Then he said, “You can’t see it, but I’m glaring at you _very hard_ right now.”

“No, you’re glaring at a signpost,” said Crowley, tugging at his hand. “Come on.”

Aziraphale was guided through what he was pretty sure was a back entrance, if the slightly extended walk and quiet entry through a heavy-sounding door were any indication. He was correct about this, and Crowley then led him down a short corridor to a small, barren office. His, to be exact.

After leading him inside, he squeezed Aziraphale’s shoulders and whispered, “Right. Stay there. Don’t move, and don’t take off the blindfold. I’ll be right back.” Then he left the room, closing and locking the door behind him.

The instructions were simple enough, and Aziraphale had every intention of going along with them. For the first few minutes. It had to have been at least ten. Maybe eight. He could hear Crowley’s voice outside. It sounded like he was barking orders at someone, but Aziraphale couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, even with his angelic ears. Crowley didn’t _want_ him to hear, it seemed.

As the minutes ticked on and things only grew quieter, Aziraphale began swaying back and forth on his feet a little just for something to do. Eventually, however, the worry that perhaps he was being pranked, or that Crowley had possibly gotten distracted and forgotten him, got the better of him. Slowly and very cautiously, he nudged the blindfold up a little with his finger, just so he could see a little bit.

He wasn’t impressed with what he could see, truth be told.

“Am I in an office or a storage cabinet?” he muttered quietly to himself, taking in the bland, off-white walls and very-little-else in front of him. He turned to glance over his shoulder, taking note of the desk and chairs behind him, and could only tut and wrinkle his nose.

“Surely he can’t be expecting a dalliance _here_ of all places,” he balked, stepping a little closer to the desk just to confirm his disdain for it. “There’s absolutely no atmosphere. Positively drab. Honestly, Crowley. I know your tastes run a bit austere these days, but if you’re expecting me to make love in the presence of _particle board_ . . . . ”

The door opened quite suddenly, and Aziraphale jumped a little and tried to fix the blindfold back properly over his eyes.

Crowley absolutely saw that.

“You took off the blindfold,” he accused, pointing very harshly and very pointlessly at him.

“No, I didn’t,” said Aziraphale.

“You did! I saw you fixing it! I specifically told you not to take it off.” Crowley slammed the door behind himself and stepped menacingly in Aziraphale’s direction. Not that Aziraphale could see any of said menace. Didn’t matter - Crowley made sure he’d _feel_ it.

“Yes, you did, and I think you’ll find that I did not, in fact, _take off_ the blindfold,” said Aziraphale, primly. “Your specific instruction was ‘don’t take off the blindfold’, and it stayed on my face the entire time. You never told me I couldn’t peek.”

That gave Crowley pause for a moment. Then he chuckled from low in the throat, stepping directly in front of Aziraphale. “Rules lawyering now, are we? Aww, he thinks he can out-rules-lawyer the demon.” 

“I can, and have in the past,” Aziraphale reminded him.

Crowley snatched the blindfold off him, leaving him momentarily blinking in surprise and mild disorientation. Upon seeing the dark sneer on Crowley’s face, so close to his own, Aziraphale gasped a little bit. His gaze flickered from Crowley’s curled lips to his eyes, or at least the dark lenses in front of them.

“Here’s the thing,” said Crowley, in a very quiet voice. “The other part of your instructions was ‘don’t move’.” He pointed to a spot on the floor a few feet away. “And as I recall, I left you over there.”

“ . . . Ah. Yes, well, you see, there I would argue that where specificity is concerned, ‘don’t move’ is fairly lacking, having a rather wide array of possible interpreta—oh!”

Aziraphale found himself quite suddenly turned around and pushed face-down on top of the cheap desk, with Crowley’s hand on his back keeping him firmly pressed there.

“You’ve been nothing but trouble today,” Crowley sighed through his teeth, shaking his head to emphasize his disappointment. “Making me chase you around the neighbourhood. Eating in my car. Prancing about indecently in public. Tossing your things about carelessly and making me pick up after you. Teasing me. Now this? What happened to ‘I’m an angel, I can’t not do what I’m told’, hm?”

“ . . . You’re a demon. It’s different,” said Aziraphale, looking rather unimpressed with his cheek flat against the unconvincing false wood grain. “I’m supposed to defy you. It’s rather the whole point, I believe.”

“We quit our jobs.”

“Yes, well. Old habits and all that. Natural instincts, perhaps.”

“Natural instincts . . . ” Crowley echoed. “Well, those are always fun to play with and question, aren’t they?”

With a snap of the demon’s fingers, Aziraphale found a great deal more of his skin sticking to that awful piece of furniture. He was back down to his lingerie, with the rest of his clothing neatly folded at the opposite end of the desk. His bow tie, however, remained encircling his otherwise-bare neck. 

Once he’d gathered what was going on, He cast a pleading look up over his shoulder at Crowley. “Oh, please, dear, not here of all places.”

Crowley, meanwhile, was digging his phone out of his pocket with his free hand. Once he had it, he quickly summoned his camera and lined Aziraphale up within the frame. He leaned back and forth for a moment, trying to get the best angle, before snapping a photo. “You’re not really in a position to be making demands, angel,” he pointed out. Not that it was actually true. Aziraphale’s hands were free — he could easily push himself up and walk away whenever he liked. 

“But—!” Aziraphale protested instead, “But darling, you’re usually so much more . . . creative and romantic about how we, er . . . play.”

Crowley, who had been busy setting his phone in the air to continue snapping photos from a distance, turned away from what he was doing and flicked the phone further backward over his shoulder. Then he leaned down, draping himself directly over Aziraphale, and hissed in his ear, “Are you doubting my creativity?”

“I-it’s just . . . oh, I don’t know. I was hoping you had something a little more extravagant in mind, in one direction or the other. Something with cushions, at least. Or, since . . . you . . . seem to be thinking of things in the opposite extreme today, maybe something with . . . chains?” His voice raised hopefully on the last word, but his face quickly fell in disappointment as Crowley huffed and pushed off him.

“But this bland neutrality,” he continued. “This utter, bare-bones nothingness . . . I don’t know, dear, I don’t think I can really work with it— _AH!_ ” 

Taut elastic fibres snapped hard against the skin of Aziraphale’s thigh. Crowley had snapped one of the suspenders on his garter belt.

“You’ll work with what I decide you’re working with,” said Crowley. He removed his glasses and tucked them into the inner pocket of his jacket. “You’ve been insufferable all day, you know that? And you’re _still_ being greedy, fussy, and demanding, even now. Why should I reward you?”

Aziraphale lifted himself up onto his elbows, indignant. “If I’m ‘insufferable’, as you say, it’s because you broke your word.” Indignance turned to a wounded look. “You said I wouldn't see less of you, but you barely visited.”

Legitimately concerned for a moment, Crowley stepped forward a bit and tilted his head, reaching a hand for him reflexively. However, when he spotted the slight, smug little smirk that was tugging ever-so-subtly at the corners of Aziraphale’s lips, he quickly realized he was being played and his scowl returned. Briefly, anyway. Just long enough for Aziraphale to see it, before he turned instead to playing nonchalant, in a chilling sort of way.

". . . Oh, I see. Well, I suppose you have a point,” he said. "I've neglected my angel and he's run amok. When the snake's away, the mice will play, is that right?"

". . . It's when the _cat's_ away," Aziraphale corrected. He couldn't help himself.

Crowley rolled his eyes and whispered, "They both eat mice! Work with me here!"

"Mice don't try to lure their hunters _back_ , Crowley!" Aziraphale gave another little pout, hoping it might put things back on track. "That's all I was doing. More like a bird doing a little courtship dance. Showing off my . . . plumage. For you. You haven’t even properly appreciated what I bought for you today.” He twisted a bit, and Crowley lifted his hand off his back so he could roll just enough on to his back to show off his ensemble, even gesturing up and down his torso for added flourish. His eyes were hopeful. 

Crowley stepped closer. He took Aziraphale’s hand and brought it to his lips for a moment, kissing his fingers before immediately tossing his hand aside again and reaching down to trace his fingers along the lacework over the cups of Aziraphale’s brassiere. 

“The colour’s beautiful on you,” he praised, running his finger back up to toy with one of his shoulder straps, and trailing his pinkie along the pushed up curve of Aziraphale’s breast. “And the design flatters your silhouette. You’ve always had excellent taste.” His gaze flicked back up to meet Aziraphale’s, and a nasty grin played across his lips. “Bit cheaply made by your standards, though,” he teased, and snapped the elastic strap hard against his skin.

Aziraphale yelped, and covered the offending strap with his hand. “I was in a hurry, and beggars can’t be choosers!” was his disgruntled response. He turned away from Crowley, sulking a bit. This was, in fact, exactly what Crowley wanted: it put him back on his stomach.

Crowley laid himself down on top of him again, pinning him in place. “You were _impatient_ and bought cheap, mass produced _trash_ , and you know it,” he growled. “Don’t act so injured. You _want_ this to be tawdry.” He nipped at Aziraphale’s ear, and stroked his bottom through the soft, light fabric of his panties. “You want me to _ruin_ this,” he said of the lingerie. Then he added, “You want me to ruin _you_.”

“That’s a lot of assumptions based on one little purchasing decision,” sniffed Aziraphale, avoiding looking in his direction.

“But I’m right, aren’t I? If you wanted it soft and romantic today, you’d be wearing something sentimental and well crafted.” He shook his head. “Not today, though. Today you’re wearing something _disposable_ .” Crowley snapped his garter belt this time, eliciting another yelp from Aziraphale. “So it doesn’t matter if I stretch it. Or rip it.” With Aziraphale still refusing to look him in the eye, Crowley breathed hotly into his ear, “Or _ssstain_ it.”

Aziraphale responded with a wavering moan.

Nodding slowly, Crowley pulled himself slowly back up to his full height. “There it is,” he said, satisfied. “There’s what I’m looking for.”

He roughly dug his fingers into the waistband of Aziraphale’s panties and tugged them down, baring his bottom and a hint of something else — something angels didn’t typically have.

“I see you’ve already manifested a sex, eager creature that you are,” Crowley murmured, not waiting for any invitation to press his fingers between Aziraphale’s legs and brush his fingers along the tellingly slick slit he found there. “A vulva. Oh, he _is_ feeling gluttonous and decadent today, isn’t he? I know myͫ angel. When Aziraphale wears a cock, he’s saying ‘let’s have a nice shag and a cuddle, and maybe go to dinner afterwards.’ But a vulva? Ohh, somebody wants multiple orgasms, hm?” 

He probed his fingers just the tiniest bit deeper, stroking at Aziraphale’s inner lips. Aziraphale squirmed and whimpered - a needy, encouraging sound as he tried to direct Crowley’s fingers deeper still. But Crowley pulled his hand away entirely. 

Before Aziraphale could even properly react to the sudden absence, however, Crowley’s hand returned at rocket speed, cracking down on Aziraphale’s bum with a sharp slap that had him yelping far louder than any of the little snaps of his suspenders had previously. Then Crowley did it again. And again. Each time a little harder, and a little louder. One across one cheek, then another across the other. Then a third across his cleft, and a fourth closer to the small of his back. All the while, Aziraphale tried to protest, but mostly only found himself having enough time between slaps to squirm and squeal. He tried at first to wriggle away, but Crowley put his free hand back down on his back, leaning his weight on him to hold him steady, and kept going with redoubled power in his next spanks.

“C-Cr _OH_! Crowley!” Aziraphale keened, his hips flinching rhythmically even when Crowley paused to readjust his phone’s position in the air and snap more photos of Aziraphale’s rapidly reddening arse, his panties still hanging down around his thighs, trapped between his garter belt and stockings by the suspenders. 

“Crowley, please!” Aziraphale whinged, his face reddening nearly as much as his bottom when he caught sight of what Crowley was doing. ”All I was really after at the start of all this was a little— _Oh!!_ . . . extra attention.” 

Crowley shook out his hand after that latest slap. "Well, now you have _all_ of it," he said. Then he gestured broadly at their spartan surroundings. "No distractions. Just you and me. You’re getting exactly what you want, aren’t you?” He cracked his hand across the very middle of his bum, where the skin was warmest and reddest from being the focus of most of the hits.

“ _Ooh! . . . Nnh! . . ._ Am I really to be punished for _missing you_ , darling?” Aziraphale’s eyes, large and needy, were even a little watery as he asked this. It was quite effective for tugging at Crowley’s heartstrings. Always was.

With a shake of his head, Crowley paused for a gentle moment, and tenderly stroked his hand across Aziraphale’s inflamed skin. This was a somewhat deceptive show of compassion, however, as the caress only set off all the overstimulated pain nerves there, and they were both very well aware that he was aware of it. “Of course not, angel,” Crowley cooed over Aziraphale’s groaning. “You’re being punished for being a _brat_ about it.”

Aziraphale just made his puppydog eyes even larger. “But I thought you _liked_ me that way.”

“Oh, I do, Aziraphale,” Crowley assured him. “Do you want to see how much I do?”

He unfastened his belt, and worked open his fly. He did so at a leisurely pace, giving Aziraphale plenty of time to admire the rather obvious bulge that was already there, straining against the tight, black trousers he habitually wore. Once his cock was freed, he sighed at the slight relief it brought him.

“You see?” he continued. “I adore my͒̍̈́ nau̝̣gh̻͓͔ty å̫̏ͅngel. Look what you do to me.”

Of course, Aziraphale could see what he was doing to him. He could hear and feel it, too. The air around them pulsated slightly as Crowley spoke, and there was the faintest hint of something deeper lurking just beneath his voice, and something that sizzled coiling around every word. The best way to describe it was that the parts of him that didn’t quite fit on the physical plane were condensing around him, made half-manifest and pounding their way through the walls of reality purely through his single-minded and immense _want_. 

Knowing this, Aziraphale blushed, with a shy and adoring grin and a gaze that flickered between Crowley’s hungry eyes and his ever-so-delectable phallus. He squirmed a little against the desk, and somewhere on the ethereal plane, inaudible to human ears, he emitted a happy little trill that had people even one street over smiling warmly to themselves for a moment. Crowley responded in kind with an electrified occult hiss that gave everyone on their block a sudden and very pleasant shiver, but which never actually passed over his tongue.

“So, we’re both happy, then.” Aziraphale’s smile was both wide and soft, his eyes sparkling as he rested his head on his hands. “Darling, let’s skip the rest of this punishment business. Make love to me?”

Crowley chuckled and shook his head. “Ohh, no. You’re not getting out of it that easily. I don’t care how pretty you smile or how sweetly you wiggle your hips at me. The whole point of this is that you clearly need a refresher course on patience. Besides,” he added, sliding his hand down and back between Aziraphale’s legs to glide across his soaking lips. “You can’t tell me you don’t _love_ it. Look how much your cunt is dribbling over this.”

Aziraphale mewled at the touch and grinded a little against Crowley’s hand. This earned him another sharp spank, after which Crowley grasped him by the shoulder and flipped him over onto his back. 

“No,” he said firmly. But his next movement was gentle, slowly pushing his thighs apart and massaging their inner sides. “No, Aziraphale, we’re going to finish when _I_ say we’re finished. You’ve been very disrespectful towards me lately, and it’s unbecoming of you. You’re going to face consequences for it.”

Then Crowley held up a finger, which he brushed down Aziraphale’s chest. “But, if you behave yourself and take the rest of your punishment like a good angel, there’ll be a wonderful reward for you at the end. I’m going to spoil you and make up for all the lonely waiting I’ve put you through. I promise. I’m not like your old boss. My punishments aren’t eternal. They’re fair, they end, and then I shower you with love. You just have to endure a little bit more for me. Can you do that?”

“How much more?” Aziraphale moaned, still rather optimistically pushing his hips up in hopes that Crowley might give in to temptation and touch his quim again.

And so Crowley did. Harshly, with a spank just as hard as the ones he’d rained down on his bottom earlier. This time instead of a crisp clap, however, the sound it made was quieter: a wet, meaty sort of noise that absorbed the impact in a strangely welcoming manner. Aziraphale keened at the peculiar mixture of pain and pleasure that shot through his body.

“Let’s say nineteen more of those,” said Crowley, catching Aziraphale’s knees as he reflexively tried to close them. “And bear in mind, that’s me being generous. Personally I think I ought to give you fifty, but if you’re _very good_ , we can stop at twenty.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale whimpered, nodding and spreading his knees as far apart as the panties dangling at his thighs would let him.

Crowley grinned broadly, and pushed them even further apart. There was the telltale sound of many tiny elastic fibers snapping apart as the panties stretched beyond their limit, and Aziraphale said nothing about it even as the fabric dug into his skin. 

“That’sss m̈ͬ̂̃y ssssweet ange̋̈́l͛̅̒.” 

Aziraphale endured the subsequent spanks to his vulva admirably, with quiet whinges and bites of his lip. All the while, Crowley’s phone circled them in the air, quietly snapping photo after photo. After the twentieth slap, Aziraphale was just breathing a sigh of relief when Crowley added a further ten spanks in rapid succession, right over his clit, which had him crying out and panting. When that finished, Crowley smirked and leaned over him, making a show of licking his wet fingers, then said, “There. All done.”

“What was that for?!” Aziraphale demanded. “I was the picture of good behaviour!”

Shaking his head, Crowley’s hand nonetheless returned to Aziraphale’s vulva, this time massaging his fingers between the warm, wet lips. “On the twelfth one,” he reminded him, “you looked me dead in the eye and told me you love me.”

“ _O-ohh_ . . . I do love you,” Aziraphale moaned.  
  


“You were trying to butter me up.” Already, Crowley’s hand was pressing harder and circling faster against Aziraphale’s clit. Aziraphale’s hips twitched appreciatively, even as some leftover sting from his spankings carried on echoing across every bit of flesh that Crowley touched. 

“I was— _mmnh! Yes!_ —o-overflowing with love,” Aziraphale argued.

“I’ll say you were. _Are_ , even,” agreed Crowley, pausing his ministrations to trail his slick fingers up to Aziraphale’s mouth. “Just look at how wet you are. Lick,” he ordered. For emphasis, and for fun, he brushed a dewy line over Aziraphale’s parted lips. 

With a shiver, Aziraphale obediently and delicately poked his tongue out, tasting himself on Crowley’s fingertips. He took it a step further by pressing his lips there as well, turning it to a soft and sensual kiss. Crowley smiled approvingly, curling his fingers and pressing them deeper into Aziraphale’s mouth for him to suck on for a moment before popping them back out again and resuming his work between his legs. 

He worked him fast and hard, keeping a relentless pace and pressure on Aziraphale’s tender clit that quickly had his hips bucking helplessly and his head tossing back, baring his neck for Crowley to suck and bite as he pleased. His moaning was unrestrained, coming from the depths of his throat between gasps and echoing around the barren room, likely bleeding out the door as well. 

“M̃̅ỳ deca̴d͢e̷n̸t an̓̿ͬͦg͌elͧͫ̇͂,” Crowley growled, making it sound like scolding when they both knew it was praise. His fingers worked even faster, and he could tell Aziraphale was approaching his peak. “Hasn’t taken you long, has it, fussy one? All that chatter about the interior design and not being able to _work_ with it. But here you are, putty in my hands, and I’ve barely even got started.” 

“Yes, yes . . . .” whimpered Aziraphale.

Crowley captured those mewling lips in his and toyed with his tongue, letting the angel moan into his mouth as his fingers urged him fiercely on towards ecstasy.

“Come for me, then,” Crowley whispered after pulling their lips apart. 

It was a simple enough command, and one Aziraphale was able to follow easily. With a short series of euphoric sobs, his body seized and arched off the desk in rapture. 

Crowley kept going with his merciless pace even as Aziraphale’s thighs attempted to clamp shut around him and his body writhed uncontrollably. With his fingers still strumming away at that little pleasure node, he kept Aziraphale gasping through two more rapid climaxes before pulling his hand away and letting him ride the shockwaves on his own.

He pulled the phone out of the air and crouched down slightly, taking a few photos of Aziraphale’s still-twitching sex and the small, sticky puddle that had formed on the desk beneath him. Once satisfied, he turned the screen towards Aziraphale to show him.

“Look there,” he said. Once Aziraphale dazedly glanced over, his brow furrowing at the image, Crowley explained, “Proof that I can make you come _anywhere_.”

To his credit, Aziraphale didn’t roll his eyes. “ . . . I’ll try not to doubt your abilities again, my dear,” he promised with an affectionate smile.

Crowley tossed the phone over his shoulder, and rather than clattering to the ground, it resumed its patrol around the room. Not giving Aziraphale any more time to come down from his climax, he climbed up on top of the desk with him, straddled his chest, and prodded his dick in his face.

“Suck,” he commanded, his eyes fully yellow and glazed with lust.

A bit sluggishly, Aziraphale opened his mouth enough for Crowley to slide in. He did so with luxurious slowness, breathing a shuddering sigh as Aziraphale took him into the glorious warmth of his mouth. Gripping a clump of hair at the back of Aziraphale’s head, he slid as far to the back of Aziraphale’s mouth as this particular position would permit (with reasonable comfort for his angel, at any rate) before pulling back out and thrusting back in again. Keeping his pace slow and deliberate, his hips worked in hypnotic circles, and they both groaned in mutual pleasure through each leisurely piston of Crowley’s cock. His phone was still hovering around them, and as it drew close enough, Crowley plucked it from the air again to snap a few more shots and grab a quick video from his own point of view. 

Aziraphale still wasn’t fully certain how he felt about this impromptu and graphic extension of his erotic photoshoot, but he supposed even if the photos weren’t exactly the most flattering or well composed, it wasn’t as though anyone was ever likely to see them besides Crowley. He knew Crowley would make certain of that. Besides, one benefit of this arrangement was that his photographer kept telling him how gorgeous and sexy he was.

Eventually, after his pace began to quicken, Crowley withdrew himself from Aziraphale’s mouth. He shifted down his torso a bit, lining up his cock with Aziraphale’s sternum, and pointed at him. 

“Push your chest together more for me, angel. The bra’s not enough with you on your back.”

Aziraphale blinked for a moment, then did as he was asked. 

Pleased, Crowley pressed his cock into the newly-deepened cleavage, burrowing himself fully through it until his head was poking out the other end. After a few experimental thrusts, he found the bra was mostly just getting in the way. He slid the useless garment a little up Aziraphale’s chest, letting Aziraphale’s hands do the work of keeping his breasts pressed together for him. 

From there he quite merrily fucked his cleavage, reveling in the softness of his skin and the ever-adoring and encouraging expression on Aziraphale’s face. 

“You like that, do you?” Crowley huffed with a twinkle in his yellow eyes.

“No, not at all,” said Aziraphale, his voice a little unsteady as Crowley’s thrusts jostled him back and forth. “It’s an awful punishment. Truly dreadful. I’m having absolutely no fun at all and am very much learning my lesson, yes indeed.”

Crowley chuckled. “You joke, but this _is_ part of the punishment.”

“I must say I quite prefer your punishments to most other people’s.”

“I mean, a lot of humans would see this as sort of humiliating.”

“That’s humans, dear.”

“Being used for my pleasure.”

“Helping you feel good.”

“Defiling you.”

“There’s nothing corruptive about sex, my love.”

“ _Ngh_ —No, I mean I’m actually going to make a mess of you.” Quite suddenly, he pulled out of the fold in Aziraphale’s chest and began stroking himself furiously, panting as he tilted his hips closer to Aziraphale’s face.

“Well, that’s— _oh!_ Goodness—!” He flinched a little as Crowley’s cock slapped against his lips and cheek a few times. Crowley snickered breathlessly, then moaned and grasped another handful of Aziraphale’s hair. Knowing what was coming, Aziraphale squeezed his eyes shut, flinching again as the first jet of warm ejaculate spattered across his face.

Being a demon and not bound by rules of human biology, Crowley painted Aziraphale’s face with a somewhat excessive amount of fluid, entirely for his own enjoyment and to extend the length of his orgasm just that little bit longer. As the final droplets dribbled down from his cock to land on his neck, Aziraphale carefully reached up and wiped away the streaks on his eyelids before opening his eyes and licking his lips. The sight of the angel still looking so love-drunk and moaning while licking cum from his lips pulled another small spurt out of him, hitting Aziraphale in the chin.

Still shaking and a little breathless from his release, Crowley reached for his phone again. Aziraphale looked up at him right through the screen and crinkled his brow a little as he chided, “Really, my dear . . . . ”

“Not in the least bit sorry,” said Crowley, pushing the head of his softening cock against Aziraphale’s lips. Aziraphale took the hint and gave it a little kiss, giggling a little.

Once he’d collected enough photos, Crowley tossed the phone away again and pushed himself unsteadily off the desk. He took a moment to compose himself before extending a hand to Aziraphale.

“All right,” he said. “On your feet.”

Wary, Aziraphale took his hand. “What for?” he asked.

“Your reward.”

“Here I was thinking I’d already gotten it.” As he got to his feet, he grimaced a little at how the cooling messes between his thighs and on his face felt as they were affected by gravity and his change in position. 

Crowley watched one heavy glob drop from Aziraphale’s chin, stretching briefly into a thin, glistening string before snapping and landing on one of the displaced cups of his brassiere. “Not at all,” he murmured, sliding an arm around his shoulders and leading him towards the door. “In fact, this is the last part of your punishment, right here.” He pressed his lips up against his ear, and whispered. “Just look at the state of you. A right mess. Dripping with all manner of fluids, hair all over the place, lingerie in disarray. So unseemly. And you don’t get to clean up. You get to walk out that door with me, just as you are, and let me take you where we’re going.”

“W-where _are_ we going?” asked Aziraphale, eyes shifting warily between Crowley and the door as they approached it.

“You’ll see,” said Crowley, kissing a dry spot on his cheek as he reached for the doorknob. “You’ve been so good for me. Now I want to make it all up to you. Pamper and spoil you. Can you trust me a little more?”

With a nod from Aziraphale, Crowley opened the door, leading him out into a small corridor. They followed this a short way before the space opened up before them. There was a wall half-obstructing their view of the destination, but Aziraphale could see a bar and kitchen off to his right, and some tables and chairs in the distance. At this, his knees seized up and he stopped in his tracks, eyes widening in horror.

“A restaurant— you’re bringing me into a _restaurant_ like _this?!_ ” he whispered frantically, backing up against Crowley’s chest and tugging his panties back up to cover himself at least a little. “I _told_ you, Crowley, I said—”

“Sssh.” Crowley pressed a finger to his lips. Black feathers closed in around him from both sides as Crowley manifested his wings and wrapped them around him. “It’s okay. It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “We’re _closed_ , Aziraphale. It’s just you and me here now. Would I get my wings out like this in a public place? Hm? And do you _really_ think I’d parade you around in front of people looking so debauched?” He stroked his shoulder. “Angel, really. That look’s just for me. I’m the only one allowed to see you like this. All ravished and vulnerable.” He chuckled, not entirely without cruelty. “But that little fright was absolutely intentional. Consider that the end of your punishment.”

Aziraphale glowered at him for a moment. After taking hold of Crowley’s wing, however, and using it to keep himself covered up as he stepped further into the establishment to get a better look around, he decided that there was no real harm done. They really were the only ones there, and judging by the papered-over windows and lacking decor on some of the walls, the establishment had never actually been open to the public before.

“You said ‘we’re’ closed,” he murmured as his eyes carried on scanning the dining room, and his finger idly stroked one of Crowley’s feathers. “You . . . own this place?” He turned around to look Crowley in the eyes. “ _This_ is your project?”

Crowley spread his wings back out behind him and took a step back, gesturing grandly towards a table near the fireplace with a bow. As he did so, the formerly barren table found itself fully dressed for dinner, with a white tablecloth, two complete place settings, and an arrangement of twelve red roses as the centrepiece. “Welcome to Asphodel,” he said. “Please, have a seat.”

“Er . . . ” said Aziraphale, uneasily. “Just a moment.” 

He raised his hand to miracle himself clean, but Crowley put his hand over it to stop him. 

“I wouldn’t bother,” he advised. Then, his smile darkening, he added, “I’m not finished with you yet.”

Aziraphale had reached that post-coital point where he mostly just felt sticky, uncomfortable, and in dire want of a wash, although that look from Crowley _was_ stirring some renewed interest in him. Nonetheless, he still looked uncertain. “I’d really prefer not to befoul those nice new chairs in the state I’m in, dear boy,” he said.

“We’ll miracle them clean after we’re done,” said Crowley.

“They’re _upholstered_ ,” Aziraphale insisted, as if that changed anything where miracles were concerned.

Sighing with exasperation and great fondness, Crowley pulled one of the artfully arranged napkins from its silver ring and shook it out, then laid it down on the chair nearest to the both of them and gestured again for Aziraphale to seat himself.

“Thank you,” said Aziraphale with a nod of satisfaction. He settled himself down, sitting primly with perfect posture and a certain dignity in spite of his rather raunchy appearance, which he was at least able to remedy slightly now as he reached across the table for the other napkin. He dabbed and scrubbed at his face with it as he glanced around. “It’s just that it all looks so lovely. You’ve decorated the place splendidly.” He wiggled a bit into the cushion, smiling appreciatively. “Comfortable, too.”

“A lot of detail went into all this,” Crowley confirmed. “Part of what took me so long.”

“Is that painting over there—?”

“One of your Sanzio da Urbinos, yeah.”

“I thought I’d lost that one!”

“You had. I found it last month.”

Aziraphale kept looking around the room, spotting little bits of decor here and there that were either souvenirs from their pasts or modern pieces reminiscent of specific periods in their lives. A warm smile grew to bursting over his features before he looked back at Crowley. 

“How lovely,” he understated, feeling all aflutter. “I . . . only wish I were in a more presentable state to view it all for the first time.”

“It’s not complete yet,” said Crowley. “This is just a preview. I’ll bring you to the grand opening, and you’ll both be dressed to the nines.” Then he reached for Aziraphale’s face, tilting his chin up to look at him. “But for my current purposes, thisss is exssactly how I want you.”

A shiver ran the length and breadth of Aziraphale’s back, but he still shifted a little disquietedly in his seat. “Well, yes, I . . . suppose you’re planning to seduce me all over again out here?” He looked him up and down, with an air of vague and somewhat absurd judgment. “One should hope so, at any rate. Otherwise with your todger hanging out in the open air like that, you look rather ridiculous. In fact, even given that, I’m afraid it’s still true.”

Crowley made a flicking gesture, and his clothing disappeared completely. He put a hand on his naked hip and arched a brow. “That better?” he asked.

Taking him in with highly appreciative eyes, from head to toe and across his wingspan, it took a moment before Aziraphale smiled and nodded. “Very much so.”

“Good,” said Crowley. “Because your dessert is here.”

Aziraphale followed the line of his gesturing hand to large platter that had miraculously appeared, where an assortment of fruits and tiny scones were artfully arranged around small cups filled with a variety of luscious dipping options: jam, custard, caramel, three varieties of chocolate sauce, and honey.

“Oh, er . . . well, yes, thank you. That does look rather inviting.” He reached for the platter, but Crowley intercepted his hand midway and kissed it instead.

“No, no, Aziraphale,” he said. “Allow me.”

He plucked up an apple slice and dipped it in caramel, then brought it to Aziraphale’s lips, pressing it up against them before he’d even had a chance to decide to open them. He lifted a brow at Crowley before agreeably opening his mouth and taking a bite, then humming appreciatively at the taste. 

After finishing his mouthful, he quipped, “You’re determined to see me smeared with every possible viscous substance tonight, aren’t you?”

“A good few, yes,” Crowley confirmed, the intensity of his gaze making it clear that he wasn’t joking. He further emphasized this by pressing the other half of the apple slice to his lips again, this time with a glob of chocolate sauce on it. 

Maintaining eye contact, Aziraphale sucked the offered fruit into his mouth, up to Crowley’s first knuckle.

“Ooh, challenge accepted,” Crowley chuckled, withdrawing his finger from Aziraphale’s mouth and caressing his cheek with his thumb. Aziraphale leaned into the touch, sighing with relish at both the gesture and the lovely dessert he was enjoying.

“I’d have preferred to give you cake, actually,” Crowley explained as he dipped a strawberry in custard. “But we haven’t got anything like that in stock yet. Was lucky we had some scones lying around. And I know you like your desserts all freshly made and organic and the like. This was the best I could do on short notice. Since you insisted on disrupting my work day.”

“Mm,” said Aziraphale when Crowley presented the strawberry to him. He tried to bite at it, but Crowley pulled it just out of his reach. This happened a few more times, with Crowley playfully dotting his nose, cheek and lips with custard before finally sliding the fruit in his mouth in a rather suggestive manner.

“I like this just fine,” he sighed after he’d chewed and swallowed, relaxing against the backrest of the chair. “Thank you, my dear.”

“You know,” said Crowley, resting a knee beside Aziraphale’s on his chair and pressing closer to him, jam-dipped scone in hand, “now that we _can_ say that, I think I want to hear more of it from you.”

Ignoring the scone for a moment, Aziraphale took hold of and tilted Crowley’s hand so he could kiss his palm. Once, then again, then a third time on his wrist. Then he beamed up at him.

“Thank you, Crowley,” he said.

They carried on like this for quite some time: Crowley, knelt astride Aziraphale on the chair, feeding something to him, then Aziraphale thanking him in increasingly erotic or breathless tones of voice after each mouthful. When they ran out of fruit and scones, Crowley took to dipping his fingers in one of the sauce cups and letting Aziraphale suck the sugary condiments from his skin. By this time things were growing more heated, with Crowley often licking stray globs of this or that from Aziraphale’s lips as soon as he withdrew his fingers, then kissing him properly. Then he’d smear something else on him and start again.

“I haven’t been kissing you enough,” Crowley moaned into Aziraphale’s mouth.

“We’ve been—mm!—kissing over and over again for half an hour,” said Aziraphale, noting that Crowley’s cock had grown hard again and kept poking him in the ribs.

“I mean just in general.” Crowley crouched lower, seating himself in Aziraphale’s lap as he kissed hungrily down his chin, jaw, and neck, and stopped to suck at the little spot where his neck met his shoulder, which always got the angel squirming. Once he’d elicited a nice moan from him, he murmured, “’M sorry, Aziraphale. Didn’t mean to neglect you, but I did.”

“ _Oh_ , you’re more than forgiven,” Aziraphale groaned, pressing his neck closer to Crowley in hopes that he’d put his mouth back on that spot. He beamed when he got what he desired, and busied his hands by stroking one up and down Crowley’s back, and running the other through his silky hair. “My dear, everything around us says I’ve been constantly on your mind. How could you have missed me when I was in everything you touched?”

“I did miss you,” Crowley assured him, pausing to bite his neck, then licking and nuzzling the nipped skin to sooth it. “A space filled with reminders of you is not, and has never been, an adequate substitute.”

“No,” agreed Aziraphale, thinking of all the souvenirs of Crowley he had back at the bookshop. “No, it’s not.”

His hand trailed down in a curve from Crowley’s upper back, around his rib cage, and down past his purely aesthetic belly button to fondle his erect member, and Crowley thrusted encouragingly up into his hand.

“Just a little bit,” he murmured. “Don’t get carried away. I want to fuck you properly, angel.”

“Who says we can’t do both?” Aziraphale asked playfully as he glided his thumb across the head of Crowley’s cock.

“Probably this chair,” observed Crowley, even as he rocked his hips. “Getting a bit creaky for my liking. Wasn’t really made for two people. ‘Specially when one of them’s sporting wings.” He caressed Aziraphale’s cheek. “I’d like it if both of us were. Get those pretty wings out for me again, pet? I only got a little tease of them in that photo, and you know I love them.”

“Hmm.” Aziraphale gave a mysterious smile and carried on stroking Crowley, almost as if he hadn’t spoken. 

“Getting bratty again, are we?” Crowley hissed, attempting to appear upset despite the increasing enthusiasm of his hip thrusts and the combing of his fingers through Aziraphale’s hair.

“Crowley my love, I have every intention of complying with your wishes. But since you’re so enjoying seeing me thoroughly defiled, I thought you might like to come on me again beforehand.” He fluttered his eyelashes at him sweetly.

Crowley made a strangled noise, followed by a growl. He stumbled to his feet, dragging Aziraphale off the chair with him.

“Is that what you want?” he asked. “More debauchery for my ̷angel̕?”

“Well, it’s like you said, my dear.” Aziraphale got himself comfortable on his knees before him, noting that the carpet was nice and plush. “I wouldn’t let this body be caught dead in such cheaply-made lingerie unless I was expecting to get a little filthy.”

Aziraphale’s wings, pristine and bright even in the dim lighting of the closed restaurant, bloomed behind him, and he sighed contentedly as they stretched and fluttered.

“I do adore you,” Crowley moaned, plunging his cock into Aziraphale’s waiting mouth. Aziraphale could only reply with a muffled vocalization, but his eyes conveyed everything he might have said and more. 

Dutifully, Aziraphale set to work making love to Crowley’s prick with his mouth. Sucking cock - Crowley’s cock in particular - ranked highly among his favourite pastimes. Especially when Crowley petted his hair and caressed his face all the while, telling him what a good job he was doing, how talented his tongue was[1], how perfect he was[2]. Whenever the praise got too much he’d moan happily, letting the vibrations of his voice against that sensitive organ give Crowley an extra little shiver in return. 

“You’re enjoying yourself, pet?” Crowley checked, fairly certain of the answer but wanting confirmation all the same. Helped him relax and sink into sensation.

Aziraphale pulled off Crowley’s cock with a lusciously wet pop, and nuzzled at it with a grin and a nod.

“Whatever would make you think otherwise?”

Crowley shrugged. “Just . . . wanted to make sure I’m not doing anything off-putting that you’re too polite to mention.”

Aziraphale quirked an eyebrow at him. “When have you ever known me to be too polite to complain to you?” he asked, immediately before trailing his tongue up from the very bottoms of Crowley’s bollocks, along the underside of his shaft, up to the very tip of his glans. 

Crowley made a noncommittal noise, followed by a very happy one.

“I’m just saying,” he continued, trying to regain his composure even as his beloved angel swallowed him down his throat. “I— _hahh!_ —I want you to _really like_ everything we do. Not just, you know, accept it as a thing we’re doing— _mmh_ —i-if you’re not actually interested in doing it.”

With a very pointed stare, Aziraphale sighed through his nose, took Crowley lovingly by the hand, and guided that hand back to his hair, where he squeezed Crowley’s fingers tightly around a large, platinum blonde tuft, right at the scalp.

“ . . . Trying to tell me something?” Crowley quipped, albeit breathlessly.

In response, Aziraphale reached for Crowley’s elbow and pushed and pulled it back and forth, which moved his own head in roughly the same pattern of movement.

“The pantomime is cute, dove,” Crowley purred, “But let’s hear you use your words.”

Aziraphale popped off of Crowley’s cock again, and gasped, “Please, darling, stop worrying and fuck my face.”

Crowley didn’t need to be asked twice. Giving Aziraphale’s hair a little extra tug and twist with each thrust, they both uttered gratified groans as Crowley pleasured himself with Aziraphale’s mouth and throat.

Once it got to the point where Crowley was beginning to lose control of his hips, Aziraphale pulled back with a gasp, and took hold of his prick. Inching closer to him, he matched the pace of Crowley’s hips with his fist. In the quiet, with just the two of them, Aziraphale’s eager breaths as he opened his mouth and tapped his tongue against the underside of his cock was utterly entrancing for Crowley, who gritted his teeth and asked, “You want it?”

Aziraphale didn’t say anything back. He just nodded once with a hungry little grunt, then beamed his most adoring smile at him while slapping himself in the lips and tongue with Crowley’s dick.

Crowley might have come just from the smile alone, honestly.

If there had been any doubt in Crowley’s mind that Aziraphale was enjoying himself before, it was put to rest by the delight with which Aziraphale laughed as his face was once again glazed by Crowley’s spend. After the last of his cum was milked out by the angel’s skilled hand, the slow opening of his eyes had them both gazing, love-drunk, at one another for a brief, quiet moment.

But this only stoked the flame for Crowley. Not waiting for either one of them to recover, he hauled Aziraphale up by his bow tie and shoved him roughly back against the table, miracling himself hard again. Eagerly, Aziraphale settled himself on the tabletop, spreading his legs and drawing Crowley to him with outstretched arms. Crowley crashed against him, kissing him bruisingly and tasting his own bitterness as he pushed his shoulders back as well, laying the angel down and lining himself up between his thighs.

“Oh, this is definitely _our_ table from now on,” he gasped as he tossed some silverware out of the way and tilted Aziraphale’s hips into position. 

“Mmh, I should hope so. It’s by the hearth and has the best views for people-watching.” Aziraphale’s wings fluttered a bit underneath him, trying to find a position that was comfortable without lying atop any dishes or sauces. Much as he was enjoying the ‘splattered and debauched’ aesthetic in the moment, getting jam off the backs of his feathers would be a nightmare. Noting his discomfort, Crowley snapped his fingers and cleared the table, aside from the white tablecloth and the roses from the centrepiece, which now found themselves arranged in a halo around Aziraphale’s head. The angel’s wings vibrated and stretched as he beamed in thanks.

“That’s why I picked it, you know. Hoped you’d notice.” Crowley grinned and stroked Aziraphale’s feathers with one hand, and his wonderfully wet slit with the other. “I’ll make sure this one’s kept permanently reserved for us.”

Aziraphale encouraged him with his hips. “I must say, I never saw you as the restaurant management type.”

“I’m not. I’ll explain it all later,” Crowley grunted and shivered as he pushed his cock slowly into the soft warmth of his angel’s quim. “Just want to focus on our current activities, for the moment.”

“Mm, I concur,” Aziraphale purred. He tried to spread his thighs further apart, but found his panties restricting his movement. Making a whinging sound, he looked pointedly at Crowley and then down at his legs. 

Crowley followed his gaze, then snarled at the offending undergarments. He grabbed hold of them at the left hip seam, tearing them apart and leaving them to dangle from Aziraphale’s other leg. 

“Thank you, Crowley,” he sighed, joyfully wrapping his legs around his beloved demon.

“Mm, yes, let’s get back to that,” said Crowley, draping himself over Aziraphale and grabbing hold of his wrists, pinning them both up above his head. With a final, firm thrust he was fully enveloped in Aziraphale’s cunt, and they both moaned in unison, nuzzling one another before Aziraphale lured Crowley’s lips to his. After a luxurious kiss, Aziraphale mouthed, “Thank you, Crowley,” again with a teasing smile, and Crowley began moving his hips. 

“You should thank me,” Crowley grunted. “Threw off my whole day for you, you know.”

“Thank you, Crowley,” Aziraphale cooed, happily playing right along.

“Let you see my project early even though I wanted to wait until it was perfect for you.”

“Thank you, Crowley.”

Crowley smirked, keeping hold of Aziraphale’s wrists with one hand while brushing the thumb of his other hand over one of his nipples. “Saved you the best table in the new restaurant I made with you in mind.”

“ _O-oooh!_ —Th-thank you, Crowley.”

“Found your painting.”

“Yes, thank you, my _love_.”

Crowley snapped his hips into him a little harder. “Mmh. Always so torn, you know,” he mumbled with a bit of a dreamy smile playing at the corners of his lips. “On the one hand, I like having you all to myself.” His hand drifted away from toying with Aziraphale’s nipple, brushing down the side of his ribcage to stroke at his covert feathers. “On the other hand, there’s always that part of me that fantasizes about taking you like this in front of everyone we knew back at the office. Showing them you’re _m͉i̜͔n̯͕͙͜e_.” 

Aziraphale was biting his lip at the thought, but shook his head. “D-don’t think they have any concept of copulation as a claiming ritual, my dear,” he said. “I— _Nnh!_ —I think it’d be lost on them.”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think they’d get the picture,” Crowley smirked. “Imagine they were all here at the restaurant, and I took you over this table just like now, like this. Your gorgeous wings spread across the table for all to see, your body already spattered with my cum from sucking me off. They’d see you there—”

“Please tell me you haven’t _actually_ invited them to your grand opening.”

“. . . What?” Crowley’s hips slowed to a stop. “No. What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

“Just making sure.”

“I’m trying to dirty talk you.”

“It’s working, dear, but we can’t be too careful.”

Crowley huffed. “So, I’m— I’m fucking you here on the table . . . . ”

“Yes.” Aziraphale grinned excitedly and gyrated his hips, urging him to continue both the story and the actual, real-world fucking.

It was all Crowley needed, really. He grinned back and pressed his face closer, his hips resuming their previous pace and his lips brushing his cheek as he spoke. “And you’re a _mess_ . Not only from my cum, but just like here, with your lingerie stretched and torn and stained. Everyone can see— the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, completely and willingly at the mercy of a _demon_.”

“Mm, but you _are_ merciful, my love,” Aziraphale sighed, trying to bring his hand down to caress Crowley’s face but feeling Crowley’s grip tighten around his wrists. He nuzzled him instead. “So wonderful to me.”

“But maybe I’m not that day,” he growled. “Maybe I’m punishing you again.” He used his free hand to spank Aziraphale’s hip, and delighted in the startled noise he made.

“Oh, but I want you to be nice,” cooed Aziraphale.

“Demons aren’t _nicccce_ ,” Crowley hissed.

“This one is.” Aziraphale booped their noses together. Crowley spanked him again, eliciting a yelp that melted to a whinge.

He let go of Aziraphale’s wrists and stood up a little straighter so he could tease at his clit as he carried on pistoning in and out of him. 

“They see that I can do whatever I want with you. I can give you pleasure. I can give you pain. And you take it. The angel who could withstand hellfire without having to Fall first. The angel who stopped the apocalypse. That very same angel, begging a demon to let him come.”

“Ohh,” With his hands freed, Aziraphale sat up and stroked Crowley’s arm and face with flirtatious fingers, rocking his hips in sync. “Well that must be an _awfully_ powerful demon, then.”

“He is,” Crowley purred. “He lived through a holy water bath, you know.”

“Oh, my.”

They giggled and kissed, and their ethereal essences sent another shockwave of euphoria out into the world, trilling and hissing all the while. Aziraphale squeezed his legs tighter around Crowley’s hips.

“But why would I be begging you, darling?” he inquired. “You always satisfy me.”

“Eventually,” agreed Crowley, speeding up his fingers over Aziraphale’s clitoris. “But maybe I feel like toying with you a little.”

Aziraphale whimpered. “H-how cruel.”

“Demon,” Crowley reminded him. His thrusts grew harder, shifting their heavy table slightly closer to the fireplace. His fingers worked in furious circles over the little bud of love just above Aziraphale’s opening, and his vocal appreciation for that fact echoed across the dining room. The only other sounds in the building besides their mutual groaning were the slick sounds of Aziraphale’s quim being happily teased and fucked, the slapping of Crowley’s hips and bollocks against his body, and occasionally his hand against his hip or bottom.

When Aziraphale’s own hips began to stutter, Crowley slowed his thrusts and stopped touching his clit entirely, eliciting a disgruntled whinge from the angel. Then he gradually ramped him back up to his previous near-frenzy before cutting him off again.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale growled in frustration after the third of these.

“Like I was saying, angel,” Crowley panted. “I want you to beg me.”

After pouting a moment, Aziraphale leaned forward and began licking and sucking at Crowley’s neck. “What if I ask you nicely instead?” he purred into his ear after giggling a little at the way he writhed.

“B҉̪̥̫̥̝͓͇eg̣̫͕͈̜̀͆̉ͯͮ ́̓̇҉̟̝̣ṁe,” Crowley rasped back, refusing to acknowledge just how badly he wanted to come, as well. It was a miracle he hadn’t done so yet. Quite literally. He toyed harshly again with Aziraphale’s clit, loving the way he gasped and squirmed over it. He folded his wings in just enough to tickle down Aziraphale’s shoulders and arms with his feathers, causing Aziraphale’s own wings to flap adorably in agitation.

“P-please, Crowley?” he asked.

“Mm, again.” Crowley pushed him back down onto his back, bearing down on him to get nice and deep with his thrusts.

“Yes! Yes, please, Crowley!”

“Please what, Aziraphale?”

“Please let me come, Crowley, please,” he moaned. 

“Yessss, exactly,” said Crowley, clambering on top of him. “That’s how you sound in my fantasy, angel. As I fuck you for everyone to see. Showing everyone what I can do to you. What _only._ I. Can do to you.”

“ . . . You shouldn’t care about their opinions, Crowley. Not after so long.” In spite of his breathless arousal, his voice sounded concerned and sympathetic.

Crowley chuckled at this, and brushed his fingers down Aziraphale’s face. “That’s not what it is,” he said. “Not exactly. It’s that . . . they had _you._ For _millennia_ . Them over me. Always.” He slowed his pace again, but kept his thrusts hard. “Now you’re _m̛̺ͫi͙ͪn͈͔̲e͖̖̗̫̞͗̊ͨ̇̆_. You finally chose me. I—”

“Crowley . . . !” Aziraphale gasped and held him close. “Yes, yes, I choose you. Now and forever.”

“I want you to choose me over and over again,” Crowley continued, thrusting faster. “But it’s—it’s just a fantasy, angel.”

“It’s a need,” Aziraphale whispered in his ear, stroking his hair. “I will always choose you, Crowley. And I— _oh!_ —I chose you more times in the past than you know. I should have done it more, but—” 

“No, no,” said Crowley. “You did everything you had to do, everything that sat right with you. I'd never want you to do otherwise. And if you had to choose them again, I’d want you to. I’d _tell_ you to.”

“And I’d disobey you,” chuckled Aziraphale, cupping Crowley’s face in his hands, eyes filled with love. “Because I’m _yours_.”

Something in Crowley’s composure snapped, and he gave in to his own desperately held back desires. The air around them pulsated heavily, knocking a few decorations off the mantle and even disturbing some of the bottles shelved over the bar. Crowley’s wings enclosed the two of them in a black cocoon as his hips and fingers both went wild on Aziraphale’s quim, and they kissed feverishly. 

“I’m yours,” Aziraphale repeated, moaning at both Crowley’s wonderful reaction and at what saying the words did for his own heart. “I’m _yours_ , Crowley.”

“F-fuck!” Crowley cried, “ _F̠̙̪ͮ́̃͘ü̡̮c̡k̾̅̎҉̦̣̯!_ ” 

Crowley came, spending himself deep inside the warmth and comfort that was Aziraphale. 

“Yes, yes, my love,” whimpered Aziraphale, holding him close. “Yes . . . . ”

“No,” growled Crowley. Still shaking in Aziraphale’s arms, he kept his cock lodged inside him and resumed his frenetic manipulation of Aziraphale’s clit, this time refusing to stop until Aziraphale was shaking and keening and ethereally trilling from his own peak. And then another one, just for the sake of his pride.

For a long time afterward, they laid coiled together on the table in relative, breathless silence, which Crowley eventually was the one to break by pulling Aziraphale close for a soft kiss, then whispering, “Thank you, Aziraphale.”

“Mm . . . what for?” Aziraphale asked, quite satisfied with himself.

Crowley smiled. “Tempting me.”

Aziraphale chuckled. “You’re welcome.”

Taking hold of his hand, Crowley toyed with his fingers and continued the train of thought. “And thank you, Aziraphale, for loving a demon.”

The angel was catching on to this game. “Then thank _you_ , Crowley, for loving an angel.”

“Thank you, Aziraphale, for—”

Aziraphale cleared his throat. “ _Ahem._ Crowley? As sweet as this little game of catch-up is, I do wonder if it might be more enjoyable to play it in . . . perhaps a bath, or a shower?” He offered him a strained smile.

There was a brief pause, after which Crowley declared, “Rrright. Yes, right. Let’s, erm. Let’s miracle the worst of it away and I’ll drive you home, yeah?”

With a charming simper, Aziraphale booped his nose. “Thank you, Crowley.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering, my personal headcanon for this fic places Crowley’s restaurant on the corner of Duke of York St. and Apple Tree Yard in St. James’. What’s actually there at the moment is a smallish office building. I’m not sure if the little eatery across the street actually serves milkshakes, but in their universe we’ll say it does.
> 
> \----------------------------------------  
> Footnotes:  
> [1]: High praise, coming from someone whose tongue tricks traversed the entire spectrum between sexual olympianism and cosmic horror, sometimes all at once.
> 
> [2]: Intellectually, Aziraphale knew that nobody was perfect and that he certainly was no contender for closest to the goal. Emotionally, however, it felt like a balm on his heart every time Crowley said it, because - in a way - Crowley meant it sincerely. Not ‘perfect’ in a universal sense, but ‘perfect’ in a personal sense. ‘Perfect for me’, it meant. A perfect match. A perfect fit. After so many centuries of constantly trying and failing to quite meet Heaven’s standards, there was an immense sense of relief and precious belonging in winning top marks with someone he so admired and adored in return. Someone who wanted to explore all the same little quirks and curiosities as he did, and whose proclivities complemented his own so beautifully.
> 
> For his own part, Crowley actually _did_ think that Aziraphale, even with all his foibles, was the closest thing to a universally perfect being that The Almighty had ever produced. Clever, witty, handsome, strong, brave, kind, so full of love he didn’t know where to put it all, and just enough of a bastard for that chef’s kiss of spice. He didn’t have a lot of kind things to say about The Almighty, but he thought that Aziraphale was Her masterpiece.
> 
> But good luck trying to convince him of any of that.


End file.
